America Has Been Sold

Of what should I write exactly....in this hour of infinite sadness....when America has been sold. The America I knew, or thought I knew, is gone. The President and his minions have sold it to the corporations. That his minions now seem to include the Democratic Party hurts me deeply. Pelosi has been sold. Lautenberg has been sold. A Majority of the U.S. Senate has been sold.

Seven hundred billion dollars. Does anyone even know what that means anymore? One million is a thousand thousands. One billion is a thousand millions. Our legislators, without even bothering to ask what its constituencies may think, they don't want to know, have been chomping at the bit to give away seven hundred thousand thousand thousand dollars. To our friends, the multi-national corporations. The money-changers in the temple had nothing on these guys.

I am angry to my core.

Let me give you another example. I am in the process of repairing my side patio. It consists of two by fours and two by sixes and four by fours for lumber. There is a roof consisting of about 4 4x8 sheets of plywood. There are four bundles of shingles. There are two or three tubes of a tar-like goop and a roll of felt paper. There are nails of many varieties. Total material cost for this delightful addition is less than 500 dollars. If I were to add the cost of concrete and some stones for the floor, which were in place and not in need of repair, the material cost for one patio would be about one thousand dollars.

That means I could build 700 million patios for 700 billion dollars. There are less than 300 million people living in the entire United States. Let's assume there are four people per household. That would make just 75 million houses in the United States. So I would have 625 million patios left over. I would have to go to Europe and probably half of Asia to build the remaining 625 million patios.

But wait, let me give you another example. Everybody worries about employment. Let's assume that a family of four can live comfortably on 100,000 dollars per year. Ten people could be employed for just one million dollars. Ten thousand people could be employed for just one billion dollars. Seven million people could be employed for one year for seven hundred billion dollars.

There are about 8 million people living in New Jersey. Of that number, there are probably about two million heads of household, that could live on that $100,000 per year. That means the entire state of New Jersey could live quite comfortably for FOUR YEARS with 700 billion dollars.

Enough already. You get the idea. It's a ridiculous amount of money. We are told by our money-changers and crooked false representatives that our economy will fold if we don't do this. The bill will amount to six thousand dollars per person in the United States, but that would be approaching 25 thousand dollars per household. How much do you, kind reader, make, after taxes?

And that's just the federal bite. Living in New Jersey under the crooked Corzine, we are now told we need to keep the construction people working. It doesn't matter that you may not have a job, or if you DO have a job, it may be at some menial job paying no more than 20 to 50 thousand dollars per year. It doesn't matter, Corzine and his minions, or is he THEIR minion, think we should DOUBLE the tolls on our Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike to help these construction workers.

I feel sorry for anybody without a job. Why should I particularly care about construction workers? They've made a LOT of money for a LOT of years. They should have saved some of it. I've tried to save all my life. I'm building my patio because I can't afford a construction worker. But the State of New Jersey thinks IT can support the entire construction industry.

I care for the financial industry too. But who was responsible for making all those ridiculous loans? Who wrote millions of mortgages at hundreds of thousands of dollars each to families making less than $100,000 per year? Banks will fail? Good! Whose fault is it that so many thousands of houses are in foreclosure? Whose fault is it exactly that the FDIC can’t cover more than about 500 billion dollars for a liability that may be a trillion or more?

Whose fault is it that nobody can even figure out what these financial giants really may owe, that scientists and mathematicians have to be hired to figure it out? I have a feeling it’s our legislators, our legislators who have been sold over and over for so many years now.

Am I watching the Red Sox beat the Angels? Yes. Am I sad that the Mets couldn’t hit their way out of a paper bag in the latter part of September? Absolutely. And I’ll soon probably return to my coverage of the lovable Yankees too, and the Giants and the Jets.

But they’re in our pockets too. Higher ticket prices isn’t even the end of it. We now have to pay thousands of dollars for the opportunity to buy a ticket. They are all rotten to the core, maybe not as rotten as our President and Senators, but rotten enough. Rotten enough to hide the steroids in their sports for about ten years, rotten enough to cast dirt on Jose Canseco forever, to arrange a “Mitchell report” headed by an executive for the Red Sox, and now to try to hide the fact that they’re notifying minor league clubs in advance of drug tests.
My heart’s not really in this sportswriting anymore. I’m very sorry. I love the games. But isn’t it time to be more vigilant? Isn’t it time to start fighting back? Isn’t it time to start calling your so-called representatives? They’re giving our very lives away.

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