Wednesday, December 13, 2006

I wonder why?

Why is the news media so silent about the $33 million already paid in fines by the record companies in the USA for bribing radio stations and disc jockeys to play their favorite artists? Now there are hundreds of radio stations under investigation by the FCC and still no press. Is corruption so accepted that it is not even noticed?

Why did oil prices go up when we have the warmest winter on record, there were no hurricanes to destroy oil facilities, oil inventories are at high levels, and the American consumer has changed their driving habits by stopping the purchase of gas guzzling vehicles?

What happened to the promise of politicians to pull our troops out of Iraq if elected? Do they really think we will forget the promises just because committees and specialists are being consulted about a new war policy? Will the consulting amount to anything new?

How can the Bush Administration continue to refuse to talk to Iran and North Korea about issues of world significance just because they are the bad guys? Presidents Nixon and Reagan had no problem with direct talks with Red China and the Soviet Union when they were our enemies.

Why is Congress only in session four days during the month of December if we are facing so many critical issues like budget approval, immigration reform, Iraq policy, oil price gouging, corruption and a host of other matters?

Why does our government continue to insist other countries of the world must adopt a system of democracy like ours in order to get our help when only 25% of the eligible voters elected the new Congress in America? A government backed by 25% of the people means 75% don’t agree or don’t care and is that the kind of government we want for everyone else?

America faces an immigration crisis not from the flood of people who want to come to America and work but from the inertia in Congress at being able to address the issue. About 98% of all Americans are direct descendents of immigrants. The percentage of immigrants in America is less today than it was the first half of the 20th century. There is no indication immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. So why can’t we welcome the immigrants who are tax paying and productive members of the work force rather than stigmatizing them with an “illegal alien” designation?

Today, Tuesday, the government announced it raided Swift Meat Packing plants across the country and captured 1200 illegal immigrants, some with forged papers resulting from identity theft of Social Security numbers and real names to match. It means the company was duped, the government was duped, privacy laws passed by Congress prevent the SS Administration from notifying the real card holders that their Social Security numbers were stolen and the illegal immigrants were duped by the bad guys who stole the numbers and sold them to the illegals.

What they didn’t tell us was how 1200 illegal people found jobs that no one else seemed to want and they worked for an hourly wage that paid less than welfare, yet they still paid taxes and paid into the Workmen’s Comp and Social Security funds but would never benefit from their payments. The 1200 people being questioned were out of 15,000 employees of Swift & Company and 500,000 employees nationwide in the meat processing industry.

Oh yes, the raids also temporarily halted production in 15% of the meat processing plants in America which could result in shortages of meat and poultry inventory in grocery stores, price increases, hundreds of thousands of dollars in increased government costs to process the cases and deport the families if warranted, and the replacement of 8% of the meat packing workforce at Swift before full production is achieved. Does that really make sense?

Why are some people trying to adopt English as the only language allowed in America when even some of the English speaking Americans are impossible to understand? If we mandate English we should mandate that all current Americans speak English properly and read at minimum achievement levels. Neither is true today. When I was in Russia I was astounded to learn over 250 languages and dialects are spoken in the Russian federation. It doesn’t seem to keep them from functioning. And we can’t even handle two languages.

Why do the television networks continue to run so much garbage on TV and call it quality programming? Better yet, who are those millions of idiots watching the junk that show up in Nielsen polls? Remember my article about how many commercials are on TV? Well now I will tell you how much time you are wasting watching those commercials.

According to Nielsen the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV per day, 28 hours per week, 2 months nonstop per year and 9 years per lifetime. The average American youth spends 900 hours a year in school and 1500 hours per year watching television, and that does not even count the internet use. Who is teaching our children?

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