Take The Money and Run!

It wasn't too long ago the government prosecuted organized crime for loansharking. These practices exacted interest rates that any one would find as usury. But loansharking seems to have now taken a new face, it's called consumer borrowing!

Banks issuing credit cards with rates in the 30% range and thinking nothing of it. Tack on to that rate late fees, sometime based on a percentage of the outstanding balance, annual fees, statement fees, over limit fees just to name a few. How in the hell can we have a healthy economy when this fiscal extortion is sanctioned by the government. Oh I forgot, the banks and the insurance companies own the government. How silly of me not to remember that connection.

The banks got the bailout and then stick it to the taxpayers by giving out billions in bonuses. Where is our bailout? Greed is running rampant and society is falling apart by the ever increasing polarization of those that have and those who have not.

Because we have been ingrained with the consumerism ideal, we by default live above our means. Borrow today and worry about it tomorrow. Well tomorrow arrived last week!

We need to get straight with things and tell the banks no thanks. Pay cash and limit the useless quest to have more toys than the other guy. Life is short and by rights we should be happy. But when happiness is masked by gaining material things that result in the continued pressure of maintaining payments for things that we bought, used and cast away, we need to rethink our priorities.

Think about the quality of life. Simplier is better, less is more and so on.

You're on the List!

I got to say, every time you turn around there is another sampling of stupidity thrust upon us. I heard on the radio today that a little kid, around 10 years old, has the same name as some social miscreant who is on the "do not fly list." I can live with similar names on a list. Just look at a phone book.

The unbelievable part of this story is that this kid has been body searched since he was two years old! Give me a break. A guy waltzes onto an international flight with a load in his pants and for the grace of God can only fart. A little two year old kid is patted down and his drawers are searched! As this kid grows older he gets searched each and every time.

The response from the TSA or some other alphabet soup agency was the list only contains names! If they know so dam much about these people and feel they are a threat to us, then why don't they use pictures, descriptions, age statistics, and so on. But in light of all that has happened recently they are thinking of revising how they do the screening process!

They're thinking about doing something! Thinking and Government Bureaucracy are truly an oxymoron. How many years has it been since 9/11? How many soldiers have been killed, wounded, and destroyed? And these bureaucrats just sit back and think about it.

Local police departments have better technology. They can just drive up and down the street and tell if you've had your license plates renewed, or your insurance has expired. But the airport screeners still use the list!

God Help Us!

Look and You Shall See

I recently drove a charter to New York City. After dropping my passengers off I had about 10 hours to do whatever I wanted to. My fellow bus driver had never really experienced the Big Apple. So I asked him what he wanted to see and he expressed a desire to see the World Trade Center site.



The World Trade Center site is by far a location filled with emotions. Sadness, rage, remorse, anger, frustration, guilt and many more. Everyone who visits the site sees it in their own eyes. For anyone person to suggest one view is better than the other really doesn't see the true meaning of what happened there and in Washington and Pennsylvania that day in history.



Being a 35 year veteran of the fire service I can feel the pain of the loss of comrades, men and women who I never had the pleasure of meeting or serving with, giving the ultimate in the service of others. Being a human being I can share in the grief and loss that walks in stillness on this site. The thousands of lives lost that day tore at the fabric that makes us a caring society. As a member of that society I can feel the anger and rage and outright disgust for our government for allowing this to happen.



We are a free and open society and hold that near and dear to our hearts. Everyone wants their privacy. Free from Big Brother. The ability to just get in a car, train, plane or boat and just go. No travel papers, no authorizations allowing us to freely go wherever we want. We each feel that the sanctity of the individual is paramount. Our constitution provides us with those protections.



As Americans I feel we live in an extended neighborhood we call the USofA. Countless persons gave their lives protecting this neighborhood from real and perceived threats. We've never witnessed warfare in our neighborhood since the Civil War. We have felt safe and secure here at home. To our North we have the Canadians. A country much like us. To the South we have Mexico. A country that has it's share of problems but again very similar to our own ideals.



So when these idealist rag heads from the other side of the world came into our neighborhood and spread their death and destruction we were violated. We had an intrusion of the most personal kind. No wonder many of us feel the government let us down. They couldn't keep this from happening and here, nine years later, the question needs to be asked; "are we any safer today than on September 10, 2001?"



Our elected officials have abrogated their responsibility to us by fighting among themselves for the gains only they receive each time they get re-elected.



To live in America is more than a birthright or a naturalization, it is a privilege. A privilege that has attached to it the need for each and everyone of us to look out for each other and seek the common good. Our government must make our borders secure much like we secure our back yards and lock our houses at night. We will never stamp out evil in this world. But we can learn how to keep it at bay. We can learn to respect other countries way of living and not try to foist upon them our way of doing things. We should once again lead by example. We should think of our country and it's citizens before looking beyond our own shores. I don't mean isolationism but a more progressive way of dealing with the world. Dealing with other countries as a neighbor who can lend a helping hand in times of trouble or need and not be the worlds policeman.



There are too many other economies in the world that have gained substantial wealth that can afford to police their neighborhoods. Why do we need to be in Japan, Europe, Korea and many other far flung areas of the world? How many other countries have military bases around the world like the USof A?



There are real threats out there in the world. These fundamentalists will never stop trying to destroy our way of life and we will never eliminate their desire to kill all the infidels. So what we need to do is to tighten up things at home and have our neighbors do the same. We can't and shouldn't have to do it for everyone.



We have arguably the best society on earth. We are resilient, innovative, adaptive, compassionate, caring and giving and above all forgiving. These are tenants of our nations religious background. America has been labeled around the world as an "Evil Empire" and in some ways it probably has some credence to that position. We have let much of our domestic and foreign policy be crafted and implemented by the greed of Big Oil, Banks and Insurance Companies. It is the over exuberance of these captains of capitalism that have denigrated the fundamentals of capitalism.



As with anything in life tolerance and moderation need to be applied along with a moralism that is sometime overlooked.



So when I look out over the World Trade Center Site today I see two views: The construction to replace what was once there as a symbol of our resilience as a society and I see a failure of our society in allowing our government to become so self centered, on it's own existence, that the People who make up our society and therefore our government are left standing at the altar.



We owe more than can be imagined to those souls who sacrificed so much that day. A price we as a nation can only repay by keeping their spirit and our ideals alive. Never giving in to the fanatical extremism that precipitated the events of that day. In keeping that spirit alive we must not fall victim to becoming extremists ourselves.

Big Brother's Asleep

Listening to the talking heads on TV each and everyday they seem to have no shortage of being able to point fingers and slam the other guy for mistakes.

This one said this, that one said that etc. So with this debacle of the wannabe rag head bomber and the unfortunate comedy of errors that allowed him to fly through the cracks, more like open doors, I have come to the following observations:

The multitude of government agencies that are suppose to be watching the hen house still can't get it straight after all these years. Some agencies say they did what they were supposed to do or that the information was inconclusive. But the best one was that the guy was flagged as a "no fly" once the plane took off and they were going to question him when he landed. That's like the bank robber will be questioned when he starts spending the money!

And to make matters worse the President goes on TV a few days later and says we all have to pull together and do more to try and stop these attacks from happening! Well duh? The people on the flight that crashed on 9/11 in Pennsylvania did something, they gave their lives thwarting disaster. The clown with the shoe bomb was set upon by fellow passengers and captured. And good old Hot Pants Abdul Whatever was caught in the act by passengers on that flight. I think the next time something like this happens the crowd is going to be even more pissed off and will probably thrown old Mohamed Rag Head out the door of the plane at 40,000 feet.

Now how can all of this be resolved? Very simply. Get the government out of the business of trying to protect you and me. They have shown that they haven't got a clue or the ability to do anything after all the billions of dollars spent and the resources allocated. Let's let the Las Vegas casino security experts have a crack at it. These people have the most complex and sophisticated technology at their disposal that they can spot someone in real time, even wearing a disguise. They know who's been cheating and what they eat, how they spend their money, where they shop and the list goes on and on. These people are motivated by the fact that they are protecting money! They don't want to loose a penny. Their system, although not totally fool proof is much better than anything the government is using. Let the boy's in the back room take a stab at it.

Just think about the added benefits to letting them protect us from the camel jockeys and rug weavers. We wouldn't have any Gitmo situation. These felons from Arabia would find a new home in our desert. You know the one just west of the strip. Many a soul who dared to exact some level of deprivation on the casinos has been exiled to the desert and never been heard from or seen again. At no expense to the taxpayer.

Just think, What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas. And big brother can stay fast asleep at the switch as our pockets are pilfered by the banks, insurance companies and other special interests. But the sky's will be safer!

What Lights?

Since I've started driving a school bus I have had a new perspective opened to on how insane people are on the road. Driving a roll off truck or a garbage truck was dicey enough but a school bus really ups the ante.

As a driver on the road I always swore when those yellow and red flashing lights went on. I know the drill and it's for the children's safety and if they were my kids I would want them safe. So as much as I complained I adhered to the law and stopped when so instructed.

Now, driving a school bus I see these wackos drive right past without even batting an eye. I've grown accustomed to this happening everyday. My focus is on the kids and their safety. I'm entrusted with their safety and as long as I'm on the watch I'll do my darn est to make sure they arrive safe and alive.

So today I was listening to the two way radio when a group of school buses were loading at the high school had several cars race right past the row of buses loading students. Red lights and all. Just like they were invisible.

As this was happening I was sitting on a city street awaiting my students as each bus was loaded. I observed up the street a Sheriff's patrol car coming in the opposite direction. I thought He would be the enforcer if anyone ran past us today.

Now picture this: six buses in a row, all the red lights and stop signs hanging out and not only did the car directly in front of the Sheriff pass us so did the Sheriff and he motioned to the cars stopped along the row of buses to go as well.

Unbelievable!

Is The Dream Dead? Or Did We Forget to Sleep?

I just love the way that our elected officials are so double jointed that they can pat themselves on their back while taking our money out of our pockets at the same time.



This country was founded on the issue of unfair taxation and lack of representative government. A lot of people, who believed in that premise, fought for, and died defending that belief. Since the founding of America, people from all over the world looked at the American dream and tried to model their existence after it. Some with success, some with failure. America has always been a bright spot for those living in oppression and less than ideal circumstances. Still to this day people from all over the world are drawn by the American Dream. Some die trying to get here. What ever their reason is they want a piece of the Dream.



We as a society paint this picture with a broad colorful brush. But if the truth be told America is not all it's cracked up to be. Much of the dream today is generated and hyped by Hollywood. Yes it is a country based on many freedoms and ideals that others in the world can only dream of. We are still a free society. A society that can legally stand up and criticize our government and live to tell about it. It truly is a great country, but the dream is more a fleeting vision than a reality. A vision being diluted each day by forces within out control but out of our hands.



America has become so poisoned by its political process. We were warned when President Eisenhower left office. He said beware of the Industrial / Military Complex. He saw the potential of the problem fifty years ago. After America, the arsenal of democracy, bailed out the world from tyranny and oppression in world war two we were left with a society that needed a break from deprivation and sacrifice. The industrial complex that was built to fight the good fight needed to switch gears. Money was invested in factories and the allocation of natural resources to feed this beast. So beating swords into plowshares we became a consumer driven society. The war machine and the technology it developed gave us newer and better products. Appliances to make the normal daily chores easier. Cars to take us wherever we wanted to go. Cheap oil to run it all.

As we consumed the world jumped on board. The economies of the war ravaged countries, seeking to rebuild, saw the American marketplace as their golden goose. American industrialists took their fortunes and invested them elsewhere and the spiral began.

There was a time companies prided themselves on their longevity. Customer and employee loyalty. This soon changed. Stockholders invested in companies and the sought to divide and conquer. Sell off assets and plunder the fruits of the plant that grew and made America Great! Money trumped moralism. The capitalistic society was perverted. Companies became bigger, swallowing competition, big and small. Hostile takeovers, fiscal rape, and pillage became the norm.

Looking for higher returns on investments businesses outsourced their operations to other countries with lower standards of living. The balance of trade shifted. We became a debtor nation.

Yet who do we have to blame for this situation? Ourselves. America has become schizophrenic. We want jobs with rock star salaries but buy imports at dirt cheap prices. We substitute quality for quantity. We stand by passively as our elected officials pour trillions of dollars into the coffers of their special interest friends on Wall Street while overlooking the problems on Main Street.

We stand by as we become a bilingual country. Our history is solid in that as immigrants came to America they brought their cultures and assimilated them into the American Dream. Our food, our language, our traditions all have roots based in our ancestors heritage. Yet rather than adding to our cornucopia of flavors, that we call America, the latest immigrants have held fast to their language and customs without seeking to blend into our American Society.

We stand by and allow our government to leave our borders porous to illegal entrants. Our open society allows these illegals to hide in plain sight without recourse.

We have allowed our elected officials to sell out America to their special interest groups and foreign nations. What we have spent overseas for wars and special favors could have made America a stronger place. Yet we all sit back and talk a good talk but when it comes to action we keep electing the same old same old. We only have ourselves to blame.

When will we wake up? When the foreigners come calling looking for their payments on the debit we so graciously foisted on them so we could fatten the pockets of the special interest groups and elected officials?

Wake up before it's too late! The dream is real. History proves it. Many hold it near and dear. We can dream it again. We need to hold our elected officials accountable for the dream rests in our hearts and minds! We're tired of the nightmares.

Here Comes The Sun!

It's been cold this winter. So much for those who are pressing this global warming theory. I don't have the knowledge or the expertise to debate the merits of either side adequately but I sure as hell know that we just can't keep burning fossils.



Energy generation is very much an evolutionary process. Early man started with whatever he could find to burn and keep warm. Then we started burning coal - still to this day! We fished the seas after whales for their fat rendered oil. We almost killed of an entire species of mammals in the process. Then we hit oil. Black Gold, Texas Tea, the Succour of the Middle East, the nectar of the sands.



Oil was abundant and cheap. Cheap oil began our demise. Much like the juice that's needed for the addict to survive, western civilization craved this liquid. In the past week and a half the local gas prices have gone up almost twenty cents a gallon. Yet we still crave this manna.

We have spent so much more on the wars to preserve the flow of this commodity that the true price of this oil will never be affordable by the next hundred generations.

Why the madness? Greed! These interests all think about one thing, money! They profess the cost of this oil as being a cheap source of energy. But when the costs we will be faced with when the global warming cycle takes hold, the cost of the wars, the cost to clean up the environment from using this fuel the true costs are staggering and make all other forms of energy generation, solar, kinetic, Geo-thermal, and wind look cheap.

Our elective officials should look hard and make the tough choices to stop being the guardians of the Sahara and Saudi boot licks and do something right for America and the world.

All buildings have roofs. The roofs absorb and reflect the sun. So if every roof had a solar array for electric generation and panels to heat water the economies of scale to produce these alternatives would drop drastically. Set up small wind turbines in each yard and we've really begun to lower the use of oil and coal.

So just look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's Solar Man!

That's Entertainment?

Let's face it. Americans just love a good juicy scandal. The whole world is falling apart and we've become glued to the TV to hear about the dalliances and short comings about "celebrities".

Global warming, the end of the world as we know it, starving people, homelessness, nuclear proliferation world wide can't bring people to talk like the death of a drug addled pedophile, or a sports figure with an over stimulated libido.

Why do we pay so much attention to these self absorbed people? Do they care about you and me? We aren't even a pimple on their ass. Just think about how much money is spent on trying to know the daily trials and tribulations of these morons. How much money the media and the entertainment industry spends on promoting the paparazzi stunts that plaster the supermarket tabloids.

I know some well educated people in the psycho profession that try and explain it to Lucy as "we live vicariously through these people and therefore we are in awe of their every move!"

Bull Crap!

We've just abandoned the God given mental faculties we were endowed with at birth for some self absorbed piss ant who probably never worked a day in their life.

Think about how much cheaper consumer products would be if the "endorsements" were eliminated. A hundred dollar pair of sneakers would be priced more like $29. But we've been brain washed to buy only what "Joe Celeb" wears! The question that comes to my mind is why are these rabid photogs always trying to get a shot of who's kissing who or who isn't wearing under ware? What they should be doing is to catch the mug who's endorsed Pepsi drinking a Coke! Or the guy using an electric razor when he's endorsed Gillette!

Now That's Entertainment!!!

Just When You Think You've Heard It All!

I am truly beginning to think that art is taking over reality. The saying was "life imitates art" but it has become the other way around.

Take Hollywood for example. Only a skit on the Colbert Report would come up with some disillusioned rich kid getting on a plane from God knows where with explosives packed in his shorts to try and destroy an American Airliner and put himself into heaven with a thousand virgins. And he almost gets away with it!

The whole dam intelligence industry dropped the ball on this one. Any street wise kid from LA to Boston could have seen this one coming! First off the Bomber's father rats the kid out. Second, the kid pays for his airline ticket with cash, not even seeking frequent flier miles on his credit card! Thirdly, he's off to Detroit! A blown up airliner crashing into Detroit wouldn't bring much attention given the national state of affairs, especially there.

So what happens? The bomb, bombs and the kid burns his nuts off. The passengers jump on the poor son of a bitch, causing the airliner to temporarily dive to the side, because of the drastic change in weight distribution. And then the media has a field day. Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, stand by, you've been up staged by a true nut job!

Who Knows whats left?

Land of the F(r)ee

It's been a while since I put my thoughts down in this forum. I've been busy switching careers since my business was ripped right out from underneath me by some self serving, ego minded, power hungry municipal officals. All of that done without due process!

It began some fifteen years ago when the Town Board of the Town of Plattekill, NY approached me and wanted to enter into an accomidation that would benefit the Town and myself. It seemed that the elected officaldom of that Town Board wanted to extricate itself from the costly operation of running a solid waste facility. The Town felt it could save itself some $40,000 a year by turning over the operation to a private entity.

So I was asked if I would build, operate, and do what was necessary to run the operation for the Town without costing the Town a dime. The arrangement was that I would be given some "seed" money for materials and I would add the rest out of my pocket. The operation was mine and mine alone. The only caveat was that I adheared to the solid waste agreement between the Town and the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA). Profits were mine and the deficits were mine. No subsidys or bailouts. In return for this the Town was going to sell me the Transfer Station that I built for them so I could then expand the operation and provide an alternative operation to that provided by the UCRRA.

So over the intervening years the makeup of the Town Board changed. Contracts were drawn up, lawyers were paid, meetings were held and nothing moved forward. In the last few years finances became tighter. The UCRRA found new ways to fleece the operation without Town approval. I began in earnest to seek remedy from the Town. Sell me the property as we agreed or buy me out.

I also during this time period began to go head to head with the UCRRA on some real issues. Flow Control, Unfair competition in the Waste Industry by the UCRRA, and the fear and intimiation tactics employed by the UCRRA to protect their regime. I was slandered and blackballed by the management of the UCRRA. I even sued them for this and they settled out of court. They still to this day accuse me of "Criminal" activities, yet they shy away from my insistence of let's put it all before a judge and a jury if I'm so bad. They walk away! Are they really afraid of what would come out in court? Are they afraid that their entire empire would be swept away in an instant? Are they parading around in Ulster County like the emperor and his new clothes?

I really think that this agency and the Town both conspired, though not together in any organized fashion to put me out of business.

The UCRRA pushed the Town on my back bills. No doubt in my mind I was behind. Yet the Town would never sit down in the last three years to work out the difficulties that the operation was facing. They would quote me chapter and verse of our contract as to what I was doing wrong, but they wouldn't sit down and use the arbitration clause for any disputes. When I would ask about sitting down all I was told was "pay your bills"! I would ask "what about my equity and the value of the business?" The mantra was the same, "Pay Your Bills!"

So in March my office mysteriously is robbed, ransacked, and burned to the ground. And only the Supervisor comes to see what happens. I ask him at that time that "we" all need to sit down and come up with a plan for the situation for I had no insurance and no money. Again he say's, just "Pay Your Bills!"

Two weeks later, on April 1, the Town police show up and hand me a photo copy of a letter signed by the Deputy Town Supervisor informing me that the Town cancelled my contract in October 2008 and I was to be off the property will all of my property by March 31st!

Talk about a railroad job! These people think this is legal. I handed it right over to my attorney and he said don't worry they need to go through eviction proceedings and all kinds of legal mumbo jumbo and it could take years to have a resolution. Didn't happen. Two days later the UCRRA calls and asks what I'm doing answering the phone. I said, "Working." The Executive Director says to me that he was supposed to be coming down there to operate the place with one of my employees and that I had been put out on the street with all my toys. I recapped the events to him and tried to coax him to coming down and operating the place. I would have loved to put them into the lawsuit I saw transpiring. He said he'd have none of that and called the deputy supervisor.

Ten minutes later the Towns "Goon Squad" came in and told me to get out or I risked being arrested. I asked on what grounds and was told he had his orders from the deputy town supervisor. I informed him this was and illegal move on the Town's part and I wanted to see a judges signature. The Police Chief then came and we talked and I left. They locked the place up and told me not to come back.

When my attorney asked about the resolution that the Town Board passed to initiate this action, he received no response. No response and no more pressure for me to move the remainder of my property off the property.

It is so wonderful that in this country, founded on the premise of freedom and individual achievement that government could just sweep in and be so arrogant and self motivated that they could steal a person's livelihood right out from under him and attempt to get away with it.

America! Ya gotta just love it!