Am I the only one who feels, we as a country is so deeply divided and can not stand as a united nation? True is the saying "a divided house cannot stand". I used to feel, we as a people had a voice in government. i.e. our congressman/women, and our state representatives, not anymore. The arguments our government is having 99% of the time, is not about what is good for the people, only what they want in Washington D C. Washington, you know Americans wants jobs, a place to live the American Dream (only a dream now days) Health insurance for themselves and family, Medicare insurance when they get old, and so on. Why can't you see this and work to make it happen. No, our representatives in DC are all so busy, building up their own egos they have truly forgotten the reason they were send there by the people. Once we believed we had a voice in Washington, I dont believe that anymore. It was said if you don't vote, then you don't have anything to compliant about not true, we vote and still our voices are not heard. When I was growing up in Texas schools, we were taught, to respect the American Flag, you were told it was disrespectful to wear any one article of clothing resembling the flag, now they have shirts and everything else people wear. We were proud students who said the pledge of allegiance to the flag and saluted it. Now you see Americans as well as other countries burning the flag. Have you ever read the words to Star Spangled Banner? We sang it but have you just looked at the word and read them?
How long can we survive? Democrats and Republicans fighting in office, the president speaking with fork tongue. We are so busy telling other countries how to live and develop their government, yet our own government is divided. The world is laughing at us and for a good reason. I love my country and hate how the last few years have taken its toll on us. Why can't we sit at the bargaining table and act like intelligent adults, resolve the problems facing our economy, forget that you are a republican or democrat, you are an American citizen trying to put our country back together again.
Who knows maybe one of the problems is, we need to rewrite the constitution to reflex on the world today. We all know the world has changed since the constitution was written and should be updated. No wait; if we updated certain amendments, congress won't be allowed the Fat Pay Checks and incentives they receive. They would never go for that. You notice how they go into office with a modest lifestyle and while in office their lifestyle becomes very lavish. Fat Pay Checks for doing nothing, almost nothing, they do go to a lavish gym, to keep their bodies in shape for picture taking.
This is just me on my soapbox, standing firm so I don"t fall off.
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Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: July 12, 2011 11:14:14 AM
What happened is quite simple, really. We handed power to the corporate elite in exchange for their promise to keep the economy growing at unsustainable levels. Therefore, all public goods in this country are created for the direct benefit of those who actually run this country. Here are two quick examples:
Defense Spending: Military contracts are handed out to a select few companies at no-bid prices. They then overcharge the government by billions of dollars in the name of National Defense.
Medicare/Medicaid: Medical insurance that assures that the maximum amount of money is charged for all services rendered to the direct benefit to hospitals and phamiceutical companies and which discourages money spent on preventative care.
Culturally, we have replaced the concepts of Patriotism and respect for the flag with loyalty to our corporate masters. For example, apparel companies sell lots of flag-like products, which the government seems to have no problem with because it "helps the economy". Meanwhile, employees who report abuses of power by their managers are finding themselves faced with career-ending terminations. Who cares if we use an American flag to light our Bar-B-Que, but God help you if you accuse your company of screwing their customers, investors or polluting the environment!
I see a change to the Constitution as not only desirable, but absolutely necessary for the survival of our nation.
Posted By: rwilymz
Date: July 12, 2011 02:21:47 PM
Military contracts are handed out to a select few companies at no-bid prices.
We've got a bazillion laws which govern who can and who cannot bid on the contracts, and when, and how often, and ... and ... and ...
Remember the hissy-fitting over Haliburton? There's only two companies allowed to bid on that contract [LogCap]; one is Haliburton, the other is Bechtel.
But Bechtel was prohibited from bidding on LogCap as the prime contractor for twenty some-odd years back during the Reagan years because they had billing irregularities and were administratively found guilty of bilking the taxpayers. So Haliburton has had it ever since.
They then overcharge the government by billions of dollars in the name of National Defense
That's not exactly how it works.
The $250 toilet seat? wanna know how the army pays for that?
By having a 746-page army regulation that defines what a toilet seat is, how it can be requisitioned, how it can be appropriated, what size it must be, what color it must be, how dense it must be, what material it "shall" be made of, etc, etc, etc, etc. Then they hire out contracts for latrine maintenance and discover that they need a new toilet seat in the second floor barracks men's room, third stall. Their latrine maintenance company is required to go out and procure the toilet seat. And then, to ensure "quality control", they require that the toilet seat be sent to an auditing agency [sometimes, but not always, a different contract] to make sure it complies with each criterion of the 439-page army regulation that defines "toilet seat".
Ditto the $75 hammer. The $139 metric socket wrench set. The everything else. Instead of giving a corporal $39.95 plus tax to go out to Home Depot to score the first decent toilet seat in stock, they pay someone to buy it for them, then they pay someone else to make sure that the toilet seat is a toilet seat and not a kitchen stool or a tea cozy. The result is a toilet seat whose bottom line cost is $250.
There's a group of eggheads from Carnegie-Mellon who calls themselves Software Engineering Institute which wrote a theoretical codpiece for "how to write software gooder than uthers" twenty years ago by incorporating all the Aesopean morals they could jam into it. Then they sold the concept to the DoD, along with a multi-year auditing/consultation contract for a figure containing many significant zeroes and several commas. Now every piece of software written for the military is obliged to cobble together a whole bunch of pointless documentation the purpose of which is to satisfy SEI's theory and which otherwise serves no user or maintenance purpose. It doubled or tripled the cost of military software overnight, and one's SEI rating is a determining factor in whether or not a software firm is allowed to bid on DoD software contracts.
