The American Caste System

In India they have a social pecking order called a caste system.  The lowest people class is a group known as the untouchables.   Privileges afforded to the higher castes are not accessible to them.   We look at that here in the United States and we think how archaic that is, and  how odd it is in modern life.   We think ourselves to be more advanced,  more educated, and definitely more sophisticated.   I would propose that all of our sophistication and American pride is a smoke screen.  The reality is that we are more backward than they are.

First of all I would observe that human rights and freedom are not accessible to all.  For example, if a rich man gets accused of a felony, he would immediately call the family attorney, make bail, hire expert witnesses to tear down the prosecutor’s case, and either get a greatly reduced sentence or be aquitted altogether.  But, if a poor man was accused of a felony, he stays locked up during the trial,  he gets a free public defender.  I’ve actually observed trials where the public defender didn’t even have a conversation with the accused until minutes before the trial.  Their reputation is that they carry a heavy case load and are forced to do the bare minimum for their clients.   At least they can wave bye to you on your way to the big house.  There is not justice for all – only justice for those who can afford it.

Then there is the credit reporting system.  Once an individual has a tainted credit score, they will have very limited access to housing and to employment.  So, how can someone get ahead if he can’t access housing or get a job?  And to add to the pain of the credit damaged ones, the insurance company will jack up your insurance rates if your rating goes down.  This creates a slippery slope for those who are struggling to avoid homelessness.

My next exposure of the American caste system is our health care system.   I can remember when my wife’s uncle needed a new liver.   He was told that unless he could ante up $6000 to make a down payment on rejection drugs, he could not get on the list to get a new liver.  Uncle Bill died.

Finally there is the matter of how we deal with life.   Medical technology has advanced to the place where people are killing the handicapped before birth and calling it choice.  Already in this country the elderly routinely get overdosed on morphine as a form of mercy killing if the care givers determine that their quality of life is not worth saving.  The systematic killing of the unborn and the elderly is vigorously defended by the liberals.   One of the first presidential orders signed by President Obama was to allow our tax money to be used internationally to kill unwanted children.  Meanwhile there is a huge shortage of babies for adoption, forcing many in North America and Europe to travel to Asia to adopt a baby.   When we were in China adopting our daughter, we met couples from England, France, Spain, and Italy who were there to adopt.  When people ask me why we didn’t adopt an American baby, I reply that the liberal political system is working overtime to kill them all off.

Your value as a human being should not be determined by your checking account, your credit report, your disability, or your age.  Let’s be the civilized society that we claim to be.   That would be true progress and justice for all.

Political Ground Hog Day

In the comedy, Ground Hog Day, comedian Bill Murray portrays a local weather reporter who gets caught in an almost endless cycle of repeating the same day until he gets it right.  Many of the things our country is doing  strongly resembles the same futility found in the film.

It seems we went through the same frustrating dance on health care several years back, only now Hillary is the Secretary of State, and Bill is a full time play boy.   Obama’s poll numbers are slipping and the democrats are in a rush to pass a health care plan, any government health care plan.  The urgency is found in the number of  democrats who are jumping ship as they become aware that there is not a clear cut plan.

Sensing weakness,  radical leaders of rogue nations are pushing the envelope as they sense that our president is naively idealistic and militarily soft.  Iran, Afghanistan, Korea, and who is next in the lineup to “test” Obama’s resolve?  His own Vice President predicted a testing.  We’ve been down this road before.  Castro sensed weakness in John Kennedy and it almost resulted in a nuclear shootout. 

Obama is also reminiscent of Jimmy Carter, one of the worst presidents in known history.  Terrorists and dictators can smell weakness.  It is  no accident that minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President, the hostages were released.  Like Carter, Obama’s laid back style of reasoning with the unreasonable will result in a foreign policy fiasco that will set the stage for yet another strong conservative leader like Reagan to take the stage.   And let’s not forget that it was Reagan’s no-nonsense policies that brought down  the Iron Curtain and all but eliminated communism as we knew it.

If we are forced to re-live history, let’s hope and pray that we get it right this time.  Obama may just turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the Republican party.

The Destructive Power of Cigarettes

They came asking for help, they had children in need who might not get fed, but they had cigarettes.   They needed assistance for school supplies for their poor kids, but they had cigarettes.   They sleep under the stars with no home to call their own as they chain smoke cigarettes. 

How costly is it to an individual and his family to smoke?   Using a $2.50 per pack average figure, it would cost $75.00 per month,  and apporximately $900 per year.   Calculating the cost with 10% interest:   $56,952 in 20 years;  $169,536 in 30 years;  $1,299,329 in 50 years.   Hey smokers, your wealth and your future are going up in smoke!  Now triple all of the figures above for a 3 pack a day smoker and it really gets rediculous.

Perhaps you say, I’m doing good financially and I’ll do as I please and it is no one’s  business.  There are 100 million orphans in the world who desperately need our help.  What if you quit smoking and spent those millions you’ll spend on cigarettes over your lifetime on helping someone else rather than on destroying yourself? 

Then there are those who say you want to quit, but you just can’t quit.   If there was a 10 million dollar reward for quitting for good, you’d figure out how to quit even if you had to chain yourself to a tree until you kicked the habit.   So it’s not a lack of ability or opportunity, but a lack of desire that keeps people from quitting.  Or perhaps we should say it’s a love of self that keeps smokers smoking.

The financial burden on the U.S. economy is staggering :  over $92 billion is lost productivity from smoking related deaths and $100 billion in health care costs.  That amount of money would go a long way in helping our country recover from this recession (and possible depression).

I’ve worked a lot over the years helping the poor and it amazes me how people who are desperate and their family is doing without can come up with the cash for cartons of cigarettes, large cases of beer (that are hastily consumed), and costly tatoos and piercings.   Personally, if they can come up with the cash for all that stuff, they don’t need my money or time.   Once while visiting a man who was aggressively asking for my help,  I walked to his refrigerator and opened the door.  He became enraged.   I didn’t care.   I’m tired of seeing the donations of hard working people go to those who do not want a permanent solution or accountability.

On the other hand, we sometimes help those we really don’t want to help because of the children.   Who really gets hurt by the poverty that is worsened by cigarette addiction?   It is the weakest and most vulnerable of our society, the children.