If you interpret the above, the Declaration of Independence gives us the right to overthrow the government and establish a new one. I hate to admit it but knowing where we’re headed and that fact that tweaks aren’t enough, I’d be ready start a revolution. We’re certainly at the point of taxation without representation!
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government. “
If you interpret the above, the Declaration of Independence gives us the right to overthrow the government and establish a new one. I hate to admit it but knowing where we’re headed and that fact that tweaks aren’t enough, I’d be ready start a revolution. We’re certainly at the point of taxation without representation! Below is a list of some of the resources I used in my research:
The Craft of Research (William C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Josheph M. Williams) Effective Parenting in a Defective World (Chip Ingram) Simplicity Parenting: The Power of Less (Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross) The Negative Effects of Television (Dr. Frederick J. Zimmerman) Pornography: Ground Work Guides (Debbie Nathan) The U.S. Constitution Separation of Church and State: What the Founders Meant (David Barton) Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality (Charles A. Murray) America the Uneducated (Business Week) Problems Facing American Education (National Forum) 2 Million Minutes Documentary on Education Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State (William J. Voegeli) Historical Dictionary of American Propaganda (Martin J. Mann & Herbert Romerstein) Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Laura A. Belmonte) The Effects of Welfare Reform (The Heritage Foundation) The Federal Bureau of Investigations (Uniform Crime Reports) U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics The Importance of Being Famous (Maureen Orth) The Pro’s and Con’s of Being Wealthy (Monevator) The Words of Wisdom Project (John Mann) My grandmother (Ardella Zaruba) was the most awesome person I’ve ever known. My grandfather died early on so she spent a majority of her years living alone in a very small house in Telford, TN. They say that around 11,000 people live in Telford but I find that hard to believe. First of all, there isn’t a downtown anymore and I’ve only seen the same 100 or so people over and over again during the last 30 years I’ve visited there!
I loved talking with my grandmother and gleaning words of wisdom from her. She wasn’t college educated but her common sense was unbelievable. I’ve missed those times we spent together and the fantastic insight she gave me. So it hit me one day that it would be great to come up with questions about life that I could ask senior citizens so I could get insight from them. That’s exactly what I did so I ended up calling it the Words of Wisdom Project. Here are some of the questions along with their feedback: 1) There is a major obesity problem among adolescent children (more than tripled in last 30 years to 20%) that didn’t exist when you were kids. Why do you think this is happening? We didn’t have access to food like children do today. Our parents had very little snacks in the house (mostly cookies in a jar) and they watched it closely. Of course this is where the phrase :“Don’t get your fingers caught in the cookie jar!” came from. We didn’t have the vending machines that are available or fast food restaurants. We had to eat at home where our parents knew what we were eating and how much we were eating. We were much more active because we weren’t allowed to sit around. If we were caught sitting around the house we were told we could either go outside and play or help out with chores. So we’d end up getting exercise through playing games like baseball, kickball, riding bikes, playing tag, etc. 2) People stayed married longer in your generation compared to what’s happening today (In the U.S. 50% of first marriages, 67% second marriages, and 74% third marriages end up in divorce). Why did marriages last longer? Getting a divorce was considered taboo. If you were a divorcee’ you were kind of shunned by the community; so it was something everyone tried to avoid. Also, women didn’t have many options to leave because they couldn’t make it financially on their own. So even if they were in a bad marriage they couldn’t get out of it. We also think it was much harder to leave a marriage back then because everyone loved each other more (I admit I wasn’t expecting to hear this). Since we spent more time together as a family we built better bonds. We’d eat together, play games together, we’d ride around together. We considered marriage to be more enjoyable so leaving it didn’t sound so good. Since families today don’t grow together it’s only natural they would grow apart. Because of how families today are going all kinds of different directions it’s easier to leave because you don’t have as much keeping you there. 3) Can you give me a couple of reasons why you think it’s better to stay married than to get a divorce? All you have to do is watch TV and you’ll see so many dating sights. Most people want to find someone to marry. Once you’re married you realize that even when times are rough it would be even worse if you lived alone. Loneliness is one of the most awful feelings to experience. Plus there’s something very comforting in knowing that no matter where you go, like a party or moving to another town, you always have someone you know and are comfortable with. 4) What advice would you give a young couple just getting married? Of all the things you could tell them, what are three things that you think would be most impactful to keep their marriage on track? First and foremost they should make sure they’re marring the right person. If the reason they’re getting married is only because they love one another than they might end up with problems down the road when the fog of love starts to dissipate. Little problems that you overlook when you are madly in love become larger problems when the love fades a bit. We’d recommend that every couple considering getting married go to a qualified marriage counselor. They need to know what marriage is about; the good, the bad, and the ugly. A counselor knows how to make sure a couple’s expectations are properly set. And lastly, of all the people a married person should try to impress in the world, their spouse is the most important. 5) What are five recommendations you’d give a young couple who is asking about how to best raise their children? Lay out clear expectations as to what is expected of them and manage them just like you would an employee at work. Give your children structure don’t have a house that’s out of control. Be consistent in their disciplining. Both parents need to use the same techniques and if the child does something wrong the punishment should be given quickly and consistently; meaning you can’t punish them one time for something and then not the next time for the very same offense. Once parents aren’t consistent in their discipline their child will no longer worry about bad behavior. If this happens when they’re young, their parents will go through a nightmare when their child becomes a teenager. Be involved in what they’re doing. Parents are so busy these days with work they don’t take time to know about their child’s life like what they’re studying, who their friends are, etc. Not only does it protect your child by knowing what’s going on in their life, you also demonstrate that you love them. Even if a young person doesn’t want to admit it they want to feel your presence. The fourth thing we’d recommend is to stop filling limited family time with so many activities. This causes everyone in the family a lot of stress. Even though you might think your child will benefit from being involved in a bunch of activities, they’re actually better off being at home. Lead by example: all the characteristics you want your child to have (i.e. being kind to other people, being honest, having a good work ethic, etc.) are caught not taught. They certainly aren’t going to learn these things anywhere else. 6) Most young people today switch jobs every couple of years compared to your generation which generally tried to stay with the same employer. Do you think it’s the employee or the employer who is the main cause of this? Mostly the employees fault. Because of lack of good parenting, young people don’t think they should work hard to get anything and when promotions and raises don’t come quickly they move on. For some reason it often takes them a long time (and a lot of jobs) to figure out that all companies are the same; you earn your way to the next level. They also get bored too easily so they quit. Our lifestyle was much simpler back then so it wasn’t filled with things every second of the day. We didn’t need constant stimulation so we didn’t get bored as easily. Plus I think we looked at work differently. It was a job not a place to get personal fulfillment. We stayed in our jobs because we didn’t have the high expectations kids do today. We think the term rewarding is misunderstood. A reward is something you get when you give. So pay is a reward for your work. “Rewarding” doesn’t mean a job that’s wonderful. 7) If you could go back in time and have a do-over what are three things that you would try to do differently? In other words if you had a chance to mentor a young person, what might you tell him or her that would prevent them from making the same mistakes that you made? Be willing to take some risks. If there is something you want more than anything else in the world consider going after it. What you don’t want is to be as old as we are and wonder “what if?” Another thing we’d tell them is that family and friends will become one of the most important things to you when you get older so make sure and focus on developing good relationships with them now. The third thing we’d recommend is to never stop taking care of yourself physically and mentally. There are a lot of people in assisted living facilities who are in their 70’s and 80’s who can’t get around well because they didn’t prioritize their health along the way. Also the moment you stop learning is the moment you start dying. The people we’re around who are engaged in our community are the ones who are still reading books, newspapers, even taking some college course for the fun of it. This quote is very applicable to what they told me: “You don’t stop doing things because you get old; you get old because you stop doing things.” – Rosamunde Pilcher 8) A large percentage of high school students (30%) drop out. Do you think that most of the blame belongs with the parents, school, or student? Although everyone is to blame at some level, it all starts with the parents. A child needs his or her parents to be involved and of all the areas that need attention, education is certainly one of the most important. Kids need to know that applying themselves in school could make or break their life. 9) Just about everyone worries about getting older; since you’ve made this journey what would you tell younger people about it? Life as a senior citizen is what you make of it just as it is for everyone. We’re no happier or sadder than we were when we were younger. We still enjoy eating out with friends, having them over or going to their house, playing cards, watching a movie ect., so in many ways nothing has changed. We certainly can’t do some of the things we enjoyed doing when we were younger but you end up finding other things that are just as much fun. 10) You’ve probably experienced a lot of loss in your lifetime; what do you think is the best way to handle losing someone you care about. The secret is to think about the good times you shared not how their life ended. Their death and what led up to it was a fraction of their time on earth. Someone once said: “Don’t be sad it’s over, be happy it happened.” If someone’s death hurts you then it must be because you consider it a significant loss. You probably consider it a loss because you loved them and had great times with them at one time in your life. With this mind, train yourself to think about good stories when your mind begins to think about the person you lost. Think about funny stories that happened. Don’t most families sit around during holidays and make fun of each other for funny things that happened? If it were you who died wouldn’t you hate it if when they looked back on losing you that it made them sad? We should treat a loss just like we’d want it to be treated if we were the one who passed away. It’s my opinion that we miss a lot of wisdom because we don’t take the time to talk to seniors in our community. There are a lot of other cultures who treat their elders with immense respect; they don’t shelve them somewhere and forget about them. The greatest blessing for me when I spoke to these senior citizens was the joy they had in giving me advice. Most of us get some form of identity from our jobs and it enhances our self-esteem. As we get older and no longer work, we lose this reinforcement of our worth. I was able to give them a little bit of what they’d lost; they were able to feel pride again. If you want to make a positive difference and experience immense joy yourself, do what I did and talk to senior citizens and ask them for insight; I promise you that you’ll have a feeling inside that doesn’t come around often. George Washington Carver said something very profound: “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong; because someday you will have been all of these.” The reason I cover this topic is that our pursuit of wealth often leads to things that aren’t good for our society. There are people who cheat, lie, steal, and murder for money because they think it will make them happy if they get it. There are also people who work hard and long hours to become wealthy and this often leads to ineffective relationships with family and friends. A major factor in the success of our country centers on relationships at all levels.
My family was probably considered poor. We lived on a 90-acre farm in a single-wide trailer and then we moved into a very small home (around 1,000 sq. feet) on another farm. I had a great friend growing up named Craig. One day Craig decided to drive to another town where a relative of his lived. When we arrived I couldn’t believe how nice the home was; it was definitely the fanciest home I’d ever seen. His cousin David showed us around and then took us to a separate building (it was also brick) where he kept a motorcycle, a three wheeler, a foosball table, a pool table, a ping pong table, workout equipment; the list goes on and on. His family also had an amazing swimming pool. I almost passed out when I saw all of the incredible things I dreamed of having. David told Craig and me that we should feel free to do whatever we wanted, so we went wild playing with everything. After a while I noticed David wasn’t playing he was just watching us. When I got home and thought about it I realized he probably wasn’t interested in playing because the things he had were boring to him. This was a bit of a dream crusher for me realizing that even if I had what he had I too would get bored after a while. You’d think that I would’ve learned from this but I chased after things my whole life only to find myself in the same place as David. Stupid! I’m sure most of us have heard or read stories about lottery winners. There was a great study that was conducted by Harvard University. They wanted to compare lottery winner’s lives before and after they won. What they found is that many lottery winners ended up worse off or not much better than they were before they won. Many of the winners got scammed by con artists. One man in the study won $31MM dollars only to be killed by a friend. One man went directly to a police station because he was afraid of being robbed like some other lottery winners. One lottery winner was robbed several times. Bad guys try to track down lottery winners because if they can successfully break into their homes, they might win a lottery of their own! Having a lot of money can sometimes cause more stress than those who are getting by. Charities, family members (some of which they hadn’t heard from in years) along with friends, hound them for money. They figure the lottery winner has millions so why doesn’t he or she share. Oprah Winfrey used to talk about this issue in her life as people were constantly asking for money. When the lottery winner doesn’t share his or her winnings with their aunts/uncles, cousins, friends, siblings, etc., their relationships suffer. Instead of being treated the way they were before, friends and family sometimes end up hating them. The bottom line is that lottery winners can end up lonely and depressed yet many people still dream of winning it. The reason I’m spending so much time on this topic is that a lot of people waste their lives chasing the dream of being rich. They think if they had a lot of money their life would be great. Have you ever wondered why so many celebrities have drug and alcohol problems? How about the number of times they get married and divorced? How about the need for plastic surgery? Several research studies have said that money can help increase someone’s overall wellbeing but they say that any income over $75,000 becomes a small factor in their happiness. Of course this does depend on where you live due to costs of living. This is an interesting one: have you ever wondered why so many celebrities travel with an entourage (i.e. body guards, family, friends, etc.)? First of all, the more people they have with them the more press they get. Plus it’s usually more fun to have a group of people with them: “The more the merrier.” One of the problems with this is the celebrity’s family and friends don’t have money for expensive clubs, fine clothes, traveling overseas, upscale parties, etc. If the celebrity wants to have an entourage then he or she has to pay for it. This leads to some problems. Not only don’t their family and friends have the money to keep up with the new lifestyle they also can’t take that kind of time off from work. So what ends up happening is the celebrity asks various friends and family members to leave their jobs and take one with him or her instead. This also leads to problems. Their family and/or friends are sometimes placed in jobs they don’t have a clue how to handle or that aren’t challenging so they become bored. Then reality starts setting in and they realize that although they might not have loved their previous job it was more rewarding than what they’re doing now. They begin to realize they would feel better about themselves if they earned their own money. Plus they end up realizing they miss being around their own kind so to speak, instead of a bunch of wealthy people they have little in common with. Basically they’d like to put down the champagne and grab a cold Bud! There is no doubt that if someone is living paycheck to paycheck in order to feed their family, put a roof over their head, take care of their family’s medical needs, etc., he or she’s family would benefit by having more money. A good example of what I’m talking about is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs which if you remember states humans above all else won’t achieve self-actualization or gain self-esteem until their basic needs are met first. But if someone was in the middle-income bracket and living comfortably then going from $60,000 a year to $90,000 a year won’t matter much. The reason for this is that 80% of their basic needs were already met so going above and beyond this brings fractional improvements to their lives; at a certain point everything becomes just window dressing. I remember when I thought if I made $100,000 a year I’d be both happy and rich; it was my personal pinnacle of success. But guess what, I was wrong because it was never enough. Every time I reached a particular number it wasn’t satisfying enough so I’d set a new bar. This is embarrassing to say but it took me years to figure out that what I was doing would never satisfy me. I finally figured out that I was investing a significant amount of time into something that brought little additional joy to my life. There’s no better resource than time and we’re all equal in this respect. I wish I knew years ago that spending more time building great relationships with family and friends, and doing things I loved doing, would’ve been a much greater return on my investment. Of course the bad part is that I can’t get that time back. But I do take solace in what Carl Bard said: “Though on one can go back and make a brand new start; anyone can start now and make a brand new ending.” A great example of money never being enough is the latest NBA strike. The players dreamt of making it to college and then the NBA so they could continue to play basketball and make millions of dollars. But when they began making millions it still wasn’t enough so they went on strike to get more money from their owners. Many of them grew up in poverty yet millions of dollars weren’t enough. In 2007 an American League baseball player by the name of Alexander Rodriguez (A-Rod) was given a 10-year contract to play for the New York Yankees in the amount of 275 million dollars. What this means is that he makes around $57,000 an hour when he plays baseball. This is absolutely crazy! Now here’s where it gets worse; other players started demanding more money because of what A-Rod was making. So even though they might have been satisfied with their income, finding out someone was making much more money caused them to be unsatisfied. Many actors dream of getting on a sitcom and when they finally make it they’re ecstatic. Let’s say they were offered $50,000 an episode which I’m sure is a dream come true for them because they often work in minimum wage jobs so they can more easily make it to auditions. Then once the show starts becoming successful they want more money or they’ll quit. So here is an actor whose dream came true yet it wasn’t enough. My guess is that you and I wouldn’t be any different because it’s human nature. There are a lot of people who work very hard to have a big home. I’m sure that most of us would agree that more space just means more stuff. And when we eventually sell some things in a yard sale, we find that people don’t think as much about our stuff as we do. The money we spend on things that will inevitably make their way to a yard sale is one of the worst investments we can make. I listened to a speech one time by Zig Ziglar and he said something very profound and that is: “A house does not make a home.” What he was hoping we’d understand is the size and beauty of our home mean nothing compared to the relationships of the people inside. This is where we should invest our time not working harder and harder to have better and more things. God doesn’t want us to waste our lives chasing after treasures which will both lose their luster and eventually go away. One of my favorite groups, Kansas, sang it well: “Everything is dust in the wind.” I’ve had some people tell me they’re moving into a larger and nicer home that’s located in a good neighborhood because it’s a great investment; I’d like to debunk this theory. Small to mid-size homes typically provide a greater return on investment because they turn so much faster. The market shrinks more and more for those looking to sale their luxury home which ties up cash flow longer. Even if the entire housing market (small to mid-size homes and luxury homes) grew at the same rate it would still be a wash. The person who purchased the larger home would get more cash from the transaction but they also invested more cash so there isn’t any advantage; equity is equity. Let me give you a very important side note and it’s about owning a home at the beach; of course a lot of people dream about this. I hate to do this if you’re one of these people, but I’m probably going to burst your bubble. I don’t know if you’ve ever recognized this but when you take a vacation to the beach you’re not going to run into a lot of homeowner’s on the beach. This is often because they’ve become bored with it. Living in a house at the beach versus visiting it, are dramatically different. As I mentioned earlier everything loses its luster. Just like with everything else (i.e. new boat, new car, etc.) after a while it isn’t as important anymore. With this in mind, you get much more excitement escaping to the beach than living there. You might think you’d be different if you owned a place at the beach and you’d appreciate it. I’ve got a question for you: how good of a job are you doing of counting your blessings now? It’s sad that we know our lives would be much better if we did appreciate what we have, but for some reason many of us can’t get ourselves to do it. We’re just too busy to slow down and count our blessings. Most people don’t appreciate what they have until it’s gone. When you lose everything you have, you learn to appreciate even the smallest things. Most of us have more stuff now than we had ten years ago but we certainly don’t appreciate these things any more than we appreciated the things we had before. Getting over your head financially because of the need for more things in your life will take away from your joy not add to it. Someone once said: “It’s sad that people work so hard to have things in their life they never have time to enjoy.” Wow, that hits home! I believe most of us would say we want happiness and joy more than anything else in life; being rich won’t do it. Yet even though we know this we don’t live this. We just can’t seem to help ourselves. We work harder and harder to earn more money to buy more things that in time always lose their appeal. We continue down the wrong path even though we know we’re going the wrong way. Here’s a rule of thumb for us: if we’re traveling down a road and there’s a lot of other people on it, we’re probably going the wrong way. Let’s start today and chose the road less travelled. My information below is from the U.S. Federal Crime Bureau for the year 2010. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world; here were supposed to be the most prosperous nation yet we have some of the worst problems. Drug related crimes make up around 20% of our prison population. With the many crimes people can go to jail for, having 20% in one category is pretty astounding and probably why law enforcement calls drug use an epidemic. Think about how many times we’ve heard on the news that a serious crime was committed due to drugs (i.e. assault, burglary, murder, etc.). Wouldn’t we have an awesome society if we didn’t have this problem?
According to the Justice Bureau 93% of prisoners are men. Around 2,000,000 people are incarcerated which is about 1% of our total population while close to 5,000,000 inmates are on parole or probation. Most of these are repeat offenders. I admit that I thought more than 1% of our population was in jail because it seems like that’s all I ever hear about on the news. This is a breakdown of the crimes as to a percentage each category makes up of all crimes committed: Property 46.8%, Larceny Theft 31.9%, Burglary 11.1%, Aggravated Assault 4%, Vehicle Theft 3.8%, Robbery 1.9%, Rape .4%, and Murder .1%. No crime is good but I admit I was happy to see that violent crimes make up a small percentage of the total. I have several issues when it comes to our legal system. First of all, who decided sentencing guidelines? For some reason people who commit crimes against children typically get a lesser sentence than criminals who commit the same crime against adults. It’s my opinion that sentencing guidelines should be revisited and much harsher penalties should be placed on crimes against our children. I also believe that most sex offenders can’t be reformed and this is backed up by a tremendous amount of research including sex offenders admitting the same thing. There is a lot of work being done to come up with a way to rehab these offenders but nothing is proven highly successful yet. We need to take this into consideration when deciding sentencing. I think we should look at life sentences for men who are found guilty of raping a child. My preference when it comes to issuing a life sentence is for the rape to be reported within four weeks and that there is physical evidence. I also think we should take a look at how we rehabilitate prisoners as not enough money is spent in this area. I do know that some of them get training in prison but most of them go from their cells to the dining hall and then to recreational facilities without gaining any real life skills (i.e. computer, reading, writing, etc.) There’s no doubt in my mind that if we don’t provide prisoners with tools that will make them more marketable they will quickly end up back in prison. This is one of the reasons why 61% of convicts are repeat offenders. Unfortunately, many prisoners who get their GED’s and learn marketable skills still can’t get a job because most employers won’t hire them. I hate it but it’s just the way it is. What can these ex-convicts do but go back to what they know best which is crime? Some of the convicts say they’d rather be in prison because they were living on the streets and starving. It’s definitely sad when someone thinks prison life is better than life outside of the walls; yet another reason why we have repeat offenders. Another terrible thing that’s taking place across our country (more so in cities with a large amount of crime) is that most criminals only serve a fraction of their sentence. I’m sure you’d agree that having criminals (close to 5,000,000) walking our streets isn’t safe for our society. I don’t know about you but I think this negatively impacts my ability to pursue happiness! Where’s the Supreme Court now? The reason for sentences being reduced is primarily due to prison overcrowding. What’s more harmful to society, spending additional money on building more prisons or allowing criminals to cycle in and out of jail all of their lives? Mark Twain once said something to the effect that if you try to save money by not giving convicts the tools they need to succeed you’ll end up building more prisons. We might think we’re saving money at one end but it will end up costing us more at the other.Not to mention if it were your family member or friend who was beaten, murdered, robbed, and or raped, you’d be devastated if the person who committed the crime got off with only serving a partial sentence. There are several common denominators when it comes to the demographics of prisoners which are environmental. Most of them are from single family homes, most of them come from poor neighborhoods, most of them are high school dropouts, and most of them have never had a job that pays more than minimum wage. It would be very difficult to fix these issues and we’ve certainly learned that throwing money at it doesn’t work. In wrapping up I think we need to build more prisons; we need to expand the number of people needed to prosecute cases so we can get offenders in jail as soon as we can, we need to change our criminal codes to reflect the severity of each crime, and we need to put more emphasis on rehabilitation. Crime has been around from the beginning of mankind so it’s not going away. But if other countries are doing a better job with their criminal justice system, we should seek their advice. This is a really difficult subject for me because my strong thoughts towards fixing our economy and my beliefs towards helping people are at odds a bit.
I don’t think we should’ve created welfare in the first place because there’s nothing in our Constitution that reads we should give people money. Benjamin Franklin said: “When people find they can vote themselves money that will be the end of our republic.” Our Constitution says we have a right to pursue life, liberty and happiness and that our government has to stay out of our way. There’s nothing in there that says it’s our government’s responsibility to create these things for us. I would’ve preferred handling things like we always have and let people take care of their own. People in the U.S. have always found ways to help people in their own communities through volunteering their time and money. Most of the help given to people who are down and out comes from the religious community. What bothers me is that when President George W. Bush was in office his administration tried to help people in need by funneling money to organizations who provide community services. The ACLU got wind of it and stopped any money from going to religious organizations because they claimed it was a Separation of Church and State issue. As I showed earlier, they’re wrong. These organizations could have helped a lot of people; how sad. One of the biggest problems with the government being involved in anything is due to them never allocating enough money towards auditing the programs they create. We spend around $466,000,000,000 on welfare and we know there’s a significant amount of fraud associated with it. A lot of people have been found to cash checks from loved ones who have already passed away, claimed dependents they didn’t have, hidden income so they could be on the program. It seems like shutting down fraud would pay for our auditors’ salaries. Another problem is that our government tries to hide actual welfare costs by getting benefits to welfare recipients through other ways other than our welfare department. For example people on welfare qualify for a free cell phone that has a lot of great features. If you want to take a look at the program go to www.assurancewireless.com. When I contacted the White House about this they sent me over to someone in the FCC. I asked him how the program was funded and who voted for it. He said it wasn’t up for a vote because it wasn’t a tax issue. Guess what, after doing some more digging (something very much required when dealing with the government) I found that it was a tax and they were hiding it from tax payers. What the government did was tell the FCC they needed to increase the Universal Service Fee on our phone bills. The cell phone companies collect the money and then give it to the federal government. I consider this fraud. Not only is it a tax but it also didn’t go to the house floor for a vote nor were taxpayers told about the program. In my opinion this is the very definition of fraud! I admit that if the government was taking care of me I’d have a more difficult time motivating myself. You’d have to have a tremendous amount of willpower to pull yourself out of a situation like this. I believe in the age old philosophy of: “Give a man a fish you feed him for a day but teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” When people are dependent on the government for their livelihood versus on their selves, our country loses strength. My opinion is that welfare does our country more harm than good but unfortunately it’s the kind of thing that’s difficult or even impossible to stop now. Having unproductive citizens negatively affects our gross domestic product which is an indicator as to the wellbeing of our nation. We’re in big trouble when it comes to how educated our children are compared to other developed countries. Places like Britain, Germany, Japan, Korea, etc. blow us away with 90% high school graduation rates while ours is only around 70%. In the southeast dropout rates are even worse. They also blow us away with college degrees and their degrees are focused on Engineering, Information Technology, Math, Science, etc. While they’re pumping out doctors, engineers, scientists, etc., we’re sending out liberal art students to take them on. Guess whose winning?
We’re in a lot of trouble when it comes to the quality of education our children are receiving and the lack of hard work, dedication, and persistence, they’re being taught. Let me remind you that I do know some children have these qualities I’m just addressing those that don’t. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but many of the countries who are performing better than us have college students that were in the top of their class teaching grade school and high school. We miss out on some great teachers because the pay that teachers receive is much lower than what our top students can get in the private sector. How about we do away with the old fashioned pay scale that our schools are using and pay more for talent; especially in biology, math, and science? What harm would there be to see if by doing this we’d get a better return on our investment? There is no doubt that if I was going to college and I knew about these opportunities, I’d be much more inclined to become a teacher. One of the problems we have is that parents don’t support their children’s teachers and/or the school. What’s even worse is they discuss their displeasures in front of their child. This causes the child to lose respect for their school/teacher and it gives them a built in excuse to not do well. It certainly isn’t a problem to discuss problems with other people just don’t do it around your children. If there are issues that are significant enough for you to go to the school to address then don’t let your child know you’re doing it. Anything you don’t respect your child won’t respect either. I think that in most cases its far better to back up the teacher than your child. More than likely the teacher doesn’t have any agenda against your child while your child does have an agenda. I’m sure that most of the time you don’t get the full story from your child. If you don’t show respect for the teacher and the school system it will negatively impact your child. Students from other countries show a great amount of respect for their teachers and educational system. This is just another reason why they’re killing us in the classrooms. I also feel the way we teach children and what we teach them is out of touch with what’s needed to compete in the world. Let me start with the way we teach them. Our teachers have lost control of the classrooms because they’re forced to be politically correct so they can keep their jobs. They’re afraid to discipline a child because of the repercussions. When I grew up teachers could still use the paddle; the fear of getting spanked helped keep me in line. There’re a lot of conflicting reports regarding paddling’s affect both mentally as well as physically on a child. I’d still authorize the school system to use paddling if needed but I also understand why some parents wouldn’t want to do it. Unfortunately, teachers have little to no recourse for getting rid of disruptive children from their classrooms and this negatively affects the rest of the class’s ability to learn. Even when they try to expel a child from their class they often receive a lot of flak from the child’s parents so the principal sometimes allows the child back in. This takes the authority away from the teacher. If the teacher isn’t backed up she won’t receive any respect from her students. I don’t have a clue how bad of a student I would’ve been if I knew the teacher couldn’t do anything to me. This is probably why a lot of substitute teachers get abused. We’ve got to agree on some way to get problem children out of our classrooms. Once again, how can our children compete against other countries when we haven’t given them the best possible chance to learn? My next subject is what we teach. Our educational system should be based on preparing our children for the real world period. We need our children to be great at math, reading, speaking, technology, writing, and working on project teams. From the very first grade these things should get almost every ounce of our children’s attention. By learning the things above along with learning moral values, hard work, and dedication from their parents, our children will end up with the tools they need to help our nation succeed. One suggestion I have regarding reading is to put a series of the most popular books (like the Twigh light Saga) in the hands of young people. We need to get our children hooked on reading from the very start. We should continue this process throughout their education; reading classics in high school like we’ve done for years and discussing what they mean, bores most students to death. It turns them off from reading. Even if we think a particular book has no substance we should still give it to our students if it makes them want to read. They can read more serious books later on but at least they’ll want to do it. Regarding math, I believe we aren’t teaching children what they need in order to perform effectively in the business world. In a majority of cases companies need employees who understand adding, dividing, multiplying, subtracting, and statistical analysis. Basic algebra is also good to know but it isn’t necessary because companies know they can teach new employees algebraic principles that are directly applicable to their business. Companies don’t even bother calling what they do algebra it’s just a business application to them. The fact is most children don’t understand how algebra is used in business, it’s just a bunch of equations they are told to learn. We can’t afford to turn off any student from learning. The pinnacle of math studies in the U.S. is calculus and most high school students are required to take it. Unless your child has decided to become an engineer, physicist, scientist, etc., they don’t need it. I believe we can get away with stopping the teaching of both Algebra and Calculus and instead make the application of statistics the pinnacle of math. Statistics are used everywhere in one form or another. Statistics are seen every day as news programs share various reports about things like: crime, healthcare, the economy, etc. We can’t get away from it. How much information that you see on television was based on algebra or calculus? Not much if any. Plus learning statistics can be fun for everyone in class because they could work on problems associated with Apple Computers, The Gap, Xbox, etc. So here we’d have something fun for students to learn and at the same time make them more valuable to the marketplace. This will be a sensitive subject but let me address the study of history. The reason we’re told we need to learn history is so we can learn from the mistakes of our past; basically so history won’t repeat itself. Did the things you learn in history help prevent you from making bad decisions? I really enjoy reading about history and recently read about The French and Indian War all the way through to World War II. Although the books I read were great I can’t say I learned many lessons I could apply to my life. For me it was just fun but it probably isn’t enjoyable to a lot of people. We only have so much time available to teach our children so everything we share should directly prepare our children to compete. I’m not saying to not teach some history; we certainly should teach American History but the value they get from State History or World History isn’t that much. We could pick and choose what would be valuable to them even with U.S. history. After school they could read up on all the history they’d like as some students are into it while others aren’t. I will more than likely upset some people with what I’m about to share, but much of what we teach our children is part propaganda. Eugene Grant said: “History is written by the winners.” In other words a historian isn’t going to turn in a report and share all of the stupidity that took place by the side who won. Historians also didn’t want to share anything negative as to why the winning side went to war in the first place. The job of historian was both a dangerous and political one. One negative story could mean an immediate loss of their job and of course sometimes, a loss of their life. Not a job I’d be interested in unless it included extremely high hazardous duty pay! We aren’t immune to the slight manipulation of historical facts. It reminds me of what Mark Twain said: “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.” If you ask U.S. citizens why our forefathers left England to head for America, the normal response is that it was due to religious persecution. If you ask them what else, they probably wouldn’t have an answer. I certainly agree they left partly due to the influence of the Church of England; but it’s not like The Church of England was beating or killing them. There were also a few other denominations there so some of them had options. I believe this reason alone wouldn’t have been enough for them to take the huge risks they did; it’s not like they were travelling over on a nice Carnival Cruise ship. Our forefathers didn’t like the fact that the main religion was government sponsored just like we wouldn’t’ want our government coming up with a religion for us. But the fact is, the primary reason our forefathers were willing to risk it all was for financial reasons; the same motive that’s been around for thousands of years. The folks coming over here from England weren’t a bunch of religious zealots fleeing persecution. History tells us what typically motivates people to take risks are influence, power, and /or money. Another example of historical omission is The Boston Tea Party. There is absolutely no doubt that settlers were tired of the monopoly the East India Trade Company had on tea imports and that England taxed the tea without any of the tax revenues benefitting the settlers. Remember taxation without representation! Besides dumping tea in the harbor the settlers also refused to unload ships. The Royal Governors from England were livid because they knew they’d lose their jobs if the settlers refused to take tea from the East India Trade Company. Of course this ended up turning ugly and laid the groundwork for the revolution. If a U.S. citizen were asked what the Boston Tea Party was all about they’d probably remember that it was about taxes but they probably couldn’t come up with any other motive. The best common sense when trying to figure out why something happened is to follow the money. In this case several settlers were entrepreneurs and they had set up a black market for importing tea. It’s only natural that this would occur. With this in mind, they were politicking as hard as they could (kind of like lobbyist) to shut the East India Trade Company down from exporting product to the colonies. Their business would go through the roof if they could get rid of their major competitor. I understand that a huge part of why the settlers tossed the tea in the harbor was due to taxation without representation but that isn’t the whole story. We are taught history so we won’t repeat it but it makes it kind of hard when students don’t know all the facts. Let’s evaluate the settlers’ desire to head west and how it might have facilitated our pursuit to seek independence. The French and Indian War was from 1754 – 1763 and it was actually a war between Britain and France. They were both fighting for real estate from Canada on down to Louisiana. Various Indian tribes were being used by both the British and the French to help them fight. The British told the Indians they would provide continuous supplies of food and other goods and they also promised they would stop the English settlers from moving in to their land in order to get all of the tribes to fight for them. This was the hot issue at the time to the Indians so they jumped on Britain’s side. In thinking about why we went to war against England did you ever consider there might be more to it than religious persecution and taxes? At the same time Britain was fighting the war against the French they were trying to clamp down on English settlers who were pushing the established boundaries between the colonies and Indian Territory. Now it wasn’t so much that Britain was an honorable country who always wanted to keep their promises but they knew that in order to keep the Indian’s support they had to deliver on their word. So here we go again, follow the money. As they moved into various settlements some people made out and some didn’t; as usual it was a case of the early bird catches the worm. So the first ones there got the good land with the rivers and creeks and they got to set up businesses like animal stock trading, blacksmithing, hotel, saloon, etc. So as it normally is, the ones who weren’t benefitting the most figured they would go further west to where they had a better chance to position themselves for the best land and business opportunities. Talk about a need for a Revolution! They had to get rid of British rule or their dreams would be crushed. I’m certainly not saying this issue is the only reason everyone joined in the fight against Britain but it’s a contributing factor that as far as I know, hasn’t made its way into our classrooms. Greed is a natural human trait but it wasn’t something early historians wanted to bring up for obvious reasons. It certainly sounded better to say the colonies were fighting against British tyranny than to bring up their financial motives. Have you ever wondered how our history books have so much great information about people who lived thousands of years ago like Alexander the Great? We were informed about when he had his first battle, how many people died in the various wars he was involved in, the brilliant military strategies he deployed, where he travelled. Let me ask you, who in the world tracked all of it and how accurate is the information? Did the historian count the dead bodies? Was he with Alexander the Great all of the time and had insight into his strategies and tactics? I don’t think so. I don’t know if this is true but I read once that a major historian who wrote about Alexander the Great did it two hundred years after Alexander the Great died. Nothing would surprise me when it comes to historical record keeping so I for one wouldn’t discount it. The problem is that I was tested on this material in school so I spent time studying it. Why should I have been tested on material that wasn’t historically accurate? And what information that I studied about Alexander the Great do you think I later applied in my life? Nothing I can think of. I don’t think we should place a lot of time and attention on history when it isn’t exactly the truth. Our students should definitely have a good understanding of U.S. history but I believe that subjects like the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, etc., should get way more attention than the subject of history. I’d prefer they be experts on those subjects because they will directly impact their lives. This particular topic definitely has a variety of opinions but I think children shouldn’t have three months off during the summer nor should they have a Spring Break. All that time off definitely doesn’t prepare them for the real world. The primary reason I make this recommendation is that common sense tells me that if children in other countries are beating us dramatically in the classroom then we should take a look at how they’re doing it. Research has shown their students spend at least 25% more time in their pursuit of education. Of course extra time in our classrooms won’t matter much unless we change how and what our children our learning. We need to do a better job selling our students on how what they’re learning will help them later in life; basically what are the applications of what they’re learning. It’s certainly the approach that we use in business. If we want to sell someone something we have to convince her that she has a need. Students aren’t any different. Another problem we have as to why other countries are outperforming us is due to the limited emphasis parent’s put on studying and that our students haven’t been taught how to effectively study. Our students don’t study as much or as hard as students from places like China and India. I can’t remember which study this particular number came from, but it read that our students give up on a difficult problem 40% faster than students around the world. Our kids quickly go to the back of the book for answers, access the internet, or ask their parents for help while students from places like Japan and India are told they must come up with an answer on their own. They have to be patient and persistent. Great characteristics to learn! There is a documentary titled: Two Million Minutes. The title represents the number of minutes students are in high school. The documentary follows students from China, India, and the U.S., in order to compare how they spend their time. As the film goes back and forth between typical days in the three countries it shows American students focusing on recreation while both Chinese and Indian students spend their time studying. Indian students meet for teacher-led study sessions at 7 a.m. on Saturday mornings while their American counterparts sleep in until noon. While American students spend time going to movies, hanging out with friends, playing video games, etc., their Chinese and Indian counterparts pretty much study all the time because their parents push them to succeed. American teenagers had trophies in their rooms for basketball, football, soccer, etc., while the high school students in other countries had ribbons and trophies from math competitions, science competitions, spelling bees, etc. I saw a news report one time where they interviewed some Chinese students. They said something I consider scary and that is, “We will become a Super Power not through military strength but through knowledge. I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about it! Our current approach towards education wouldn’t be a problem if our young people were competing against other young people in the U.S. It would be great if they could enjoy life more and take the summer off and play video games or go to the movies. Those good old days are over because we’re now competing against the world. I promise you that our children will be much better off making sacrifices now than to make sacrifices for the rest of their lives. We have to somehow get that through their heads. To wrap up this topic, we need radical not tweaked changes to how we educate our children. It’s only natural that the Department of Education will aggressively push back on these proposed changes. You might not agree with me but I think if we don’t start making changes immediately we will find ourselves too far down the path to be a superpower. Other countries once respected us but now that things have changed and we have a global economy they don’t respect us as much because what we’re bringing to the table is like that of an under-developed country. Please join me in fighting for change. It will take being persistent because the establishment will try and wear us down to where they hope we’ll quit the cause. I think this is too important an issue to think other people will take care of it. It’s time we step and create our own revolution. If we don’t, we might want to get a Rosetta Stone tape on learning Mandarin Chinese! Christians and Jews both believe in the Ten Commandments. We believe that God handed these down through Moses so we could have successful societies that honor God. Being moral is directly tied to the Commandments. If we respect our parents, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t envy people around us, don’t commit adultery, don’t kill, etc., it makes sense that our life and the lives of others would be much better. I don’t think anyone can dispute this even if they don’t think the Commandments came from God. Surely they would agree that someone with incredible wisdom came up with them. I find it funny that people who don’t believe in God still have to live by most of these Commandments because our legal system is based on them.
There have been many studies as to why civilizations fail and among their findings are that moral values declined. Some of the researchers mentioned political and social problems without pinning the core cause; which is morality. I think we’d agree that morality has drastically declined in America. In my opinion the serious decline began in the late 60’s. I also believe our Supreme Court is greatly responsible for this decline because of decisions they’ve made in reference to their interpretation of our Separation of Church and State. A lot of people don’t realize the separation clause was not in the U.S. Constitution but instead in the first amendment to the Bill of Rights. This is how it reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The Supreme Court absolutely misinterpreted the verbiage above plus a major part in interpreting law is to consider the intent of those who created it. These are things that tell me exactly what the framers of: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights intended: Ø We have celebrated the birth of Christ since the very beginning of our republic and our federal government deemed his birth date a national holiday. Ø The original rules of laws were based on the Ten Commandments. Ø The Declaration of Independence, the very document we founded our country upon, mentions God four times. Ø Chaplains have always served in the House and Senate; they’re even on our government’s payroll. Ø Our national anthem mentions God. Ø God is mentioned all over buildings in Washington, DC. Ø Our founding fathers often used the mention of God in their correspondence. Ø The Constitution of every one of our states mentions God. Ø The Bible is used to swear people in during court proceedings. Ø Prayers have been said at the swearing in of every president. Ø Each president has had their hand on a Bible as they gave their oath to our country. Ø Every president’s inaugural address has mentioned God. Ø The phrase “In God We Trust” can be seen behind where the Speaker of the House sits. Ø The Supreme Court building which was built in the 1930’s has carvings of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Ø The Liberty Bell which was made in 1752 has an Old Testament verse on it. Ø Our original colleges like Harvard, William and Mary, Princeton, Yale, etc., were supported by our government and they were Christian based. I’ve got to say that I am truly shocked as to how the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment. The verbiage in the Amendment related to Church and State reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” The reason our forefathers included this particular doctrine was due to what they experienced when their previous government established The Church of England. They didn’t think governments should create religions and push it on the people but they certainly didn’t think religion had no place in governing. Here are some of the results since they changed the law: 1) We aren’t allowed to display anything related to God on public property. They made this decision in 2005 when they ruled on a display that was put up in Kentucky. The ACLU fought against it and won. 2) Businesses can now be sued on the bases of religion in the workplace if someone feels offended. 3) As we all know, prayer was taken out of public schools because it offended some people. 4) Children in public schools aren’t allowed to say “God” in the pledge of allegiance. There was a case in California where just one student complained about the pledge of allegiance and the mention of God (his parents were atheist) and so the ACLU fought and won the case. I could go on and on but I know you’re aware of the many ridiculous decisions the Supreme Court has made in reference to this amendment and the aggressive tactics the ACLU uses. The bottom line is that these types of decisions negatively affect morality in America. Interpretations like this are exactly why I believe there shouldn’t be life-time appointments in the Supreme Court. You may have asked yourself why and when did this life-time appointment thing get put into place. It was put in place in the late 1700’s because of The Federalist Document. This document included 85 articles (some people called them essays) that interpreted certain areas of The Constitution. The authors persuaded newspapers (there were a few) to publish their articles in an attempt to influence future legislation; sounds like lobbying has always been around. One thing they were pushing (which I totally agree with) is they wanted the Judicial Branch to have less authority than both the Legislative and Executive Branches. They believed the judiciaries’ duties were to strictly enforce the purposes of our Constitution so individual ideologies weren’t supposed to come into play thus having less influence/responsibility than the other branches. The reason they thought life-time appointments would be good is that in England the King would hire and fire justices at will. Laws would be set and then changed based upon the King’s agenda; so the political parties created a law that required life-time appointments so the King couldn’t’ influence legislation. The problem with using the same standards that took place in England is that our president wasn’t given the authority to hire and fire in the first place. Even if we didn’t have life-time appointments he still couldn’t do it because we didn’t give the Executive Branch that kind of power. With this in mind, I think we should force our legislators to do away with life-time appointments and have six-year term limits instead. We certainly wouldn’t want to get rid of everyone at once but we could easily stage the rotations to ensure we have experienced Supreme Court Justices on the bench at all times. There are a lot of good reasons to have term-limits for Supreme Court Justices. One of these would be to limit the impact of poor decisions. As it is now, there’s no other place to go once an issue is taken all the way up the ladder so an idiotic mistake couldn’t be rectified until people serving on the bench quit or died. There’s not a single institution in our country whether it’s the private or public sector where guaranteed life-time employment is a good idea. I believe that a lot of decisions our Supreme Court has made since the 1970’s has facilitated our moral decline and we can’t recover from them until we get some fresh faces in the court. One last note; although the ACLU certainly disagrees with my statement, legislation is based on morality and morality is a necessary tool for effective societies. Meaning the ACLU is focused on individual rights when in fact societal rights (the whole) trump individual rights for the protection of our society. Their approach is illogical because how can they say individuals have freedom to do and say whatever they’d like when so many things are against the law like stealing. So they are in fact legislating morality because they’re picking and choosing where individual rights begin and where they end. All laws should be applied by the same standards and it should be black or white. Too much grey area causes mistakes and the way we treat law can make or break our society. I realize everyone is so busy with their lives that it’s hard to get involved in political issues but this too important to not become an activist. Every day we are inundated with research from various television shows and news broadcasts (i.e. average gas prices, gross domestic product, jobless rate, political polling, U.S. population, U.S. demographics, retail sales, stock market, etc.). One major problem most of us have is we accept what we hear as the truth when we shouldn’t. Let me give you a few examples of where I caught errors in the information being given by national news agencies. I was listening to ABC Nightly News with Diane Sawyer and she shared research from the Huffington Post that said Fox News viewers aren’t as informed as people who watch other news networks. This sounded strange to me because I know a lot of Fox viewers who seem very informed. I’m more inclined to watch our local news and nightly news.
Because I love research I decided to audit their report. I started with The Huffington Post and found out the owner, Arianna Huffington, is a big-time supporter of the Democratic Party. I don’t think democrats love Fox News. I then found out they got their research from Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. After digging in to the research conducted by the university I found they only surveyed 600 people all of which live in New Jersey! I would like for you to really think about this because I would love for you to be as livid as I am. I’ve worked with about every major grocery manufacturer there is (i.e. Clorox, Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, etc.) and I promise you none of them would have conducted research this way because they would’ve lost credibility. They make sure they have an extremely large sample size (600 would be laughed at) and they’d make sure they had a cross section of demographics. How in the world could national news agencies take a report based on 600 people who live in New Jersey and treat it like its national news? Not only was it just 600 people but the research company wouldn’t provide information on how many out of the 600 were Fox News viewers. This is very important because what if only 150 out of the 600 people surveyed watched Fox. Plus, the demographics are different in New Jersey than the demographics of those living in the southeast. Fox News has a large viewer base in the southeast so these viewers would be more inclined to watch Fox for longer periods of time. So let’s think about this; news organizations like ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc., ran with the story. They were sharing the report and treating it as the truth when only 600 people out of the 300 million people in the U.S. were surveyed. I realize we don’t have 300 million people watching the news but I believe you get the point. I was outraged! How can we trust news organizations? They ran the story because they very much benefited in saying Fox News isn’t as good of a news agency as they are. The sad part is Fox News was harmed and there’s no way they can let everyone know how news viewers were misled by the other networks. Let me give you another example. I was watching the evening news with Diane Sawyer and they have an awesome segment called Made in America. They mentioned in their broadcast that Christmas sales were projected to be around $465 billion dollars. They then went on to say that an average individual spends $704 on Christmas purchases (this sounded too high to me). And lastly they said Americans only spend around 45% on American made products and if all of us would spend an extra $74 dollars on American products we’d create 200,000 jobs. Their numbers looked strange to me so I grabbed my laptop and checked them out. The first thing I did was divide the $465 billion by the average purchase amount with is $704. If you do this you’ll come up with 660 million people. I’m sure it’s sinking in now their numbers can’t be correct because our population is a little over 300 million. So right off the bat I saw a major flaw. And the thing is, if this number is so far off it also affects their projections of job growth because the $74 won’t be made by 660 million people. I sent an email to ABC not expecting to hear anything but much to my surprise from the evening news called and went over my calculations. He was embarrassed and said they got the research from the National Retail Federation. He apologized that they didn’t conduct due diligence before airing the numbers. What’s great is on the following night when they ran the Made in America segment they revised some figures and stopped showing others all together. I give them credit for this. There are more problems than the two examples I shared above. Do you really believe the media knows how many people live in the U.S. or for that matter the world? Do you think they know how many of our citizens are African American, Asian, Caucasian, and Hispanic? I even heard the news share how many people will be travelling during Thanksgiving and how many of them would be driving and flying. I don’t know about you but I don’t believe they know this. What I’m trying to get across is that everyone should be very careful when watching the news because practically everything they report (statistics wise) isn’t accurate. I’m getting ready to share something with you that’s extremely important. News organizations like Fox News and MSNBC intentionally inflame their viewers. Their primary reason for doing this is because they know if they don’t invoke strong emotions from their viewers they’ll lose them. I love marketing analytics so I know data can be spun in at least two different directions. A recent example is the White House when they touted a decline in unemployment based on a percentage. In this case I believe it was 8.7% down to 8.6%. What they neglected to share is this doesn’t mean people got jobs it just means that unemployment applications dropped. In this case over 300,000 fell out of the system without getting a job. By the way I don’t think the Obama administration did anything that other administrations have done before. With data spin in mind, Fox News can very easily spin data and make it fit their demographics while MSNBC (with different demographics) can do the same thing to their viewers. The problem is that people think what they hear is correct and it leads to major division between viewers of both networks. How many times have you heard people in a heated argument about politics because of the propaganda given to them from the network they watch? My brother has a good rule of thumb; he watches a few different networks and then figures the relative truth might be somewhere in the middle. We’re all being duped. If the networks can get us fighting between ourselves they’ve accomplished their mission. I kind of wonder if people from both networks are actually friends each knowing that by pitching their viewers against one another, they’ll have job security. I could be way off base but sometimes I wonder. I’ll cover one more topic before I move on to the next section. Please be very cautious of accepting the opinions of news consultants/experts. News agencies can find anyone they want to support their opinion or to invoke emotions from their viewers. There isn’t a topic in the world where all experts agree. Some scientist say there’s global warming while some don’t. Some economists say our economy is improving while other economists don’t. Some teachers say we need to radically change the way we educate our children while some teachers don’t. I hate to burst your news watching bubble but it’s my opinion that we should treat these news consultants/experts with extreme caution because there might be thousands of other experts who disagree with him or her. My hope is that everyone who reads this will agree with me there is no reason for us to argue about news items because we’re not arguing over the truth; we’re arguing over the news network’s version of the truth. This is one of the reasons I don’t watch as much news as I used to (or listen to radio shows), because they got me all fired up over nothing. Life can be tough enough without the media bringing us down. Keep in mind that I researched all of the things I’m getting ready to share so the fact is my information is only as good as my sources. I did my best to use multiple sources and if I saw a common theme I ran with it. In the end though I had to use my common sense and critical thinking to determine what is most accurate. This is my attempt to reiterate the insights I share are from my experiences. The best thing you can do if something doesn’t sound right to you is to do your own investigation of the material I share. I thoroughly believe in what I wrote, I hope you do too. As you well know, most other countries think Americans are greedy and that we have way more material goods than we need. One of the areas that shocks them the most is how big our homes are.
When I grew up there were five of us living in a home that was around 1,000 sq. feet; which equates to 200 sq. feet per person. We even had a wood stove which certainly isn’t common these days nor even when I grew up. Our living room and kitchen weren’t too bad but the size of our bedrooms and our one bathroom were amazingly small. I do agree with foreigners that the size of homes in the U.S. are much larger than they need to be. An average family these days has around 600 sq. feet per person which is three times what I had growing up. Where I live there are housing developments where each person averages 1,500 square feet which is like having a house per family member. I think of this topic just like I do with automobiles; there’s prestige with owning a large home. Throughout the history of mankind we’ve always had a need to show we’re doing well. I don’t have a problem with this as long as people are living within their means. Meaning someone could own a 6,000 square foot home and the mortgage is only 25% of their take-home pay whereas someone could own a 2,000 square foot home and it is 35% of their take-home pay so he’s the one living paycheck to paycheck. Since none of us knows a person’s financial situation we shouldn’t look at someone living in a large home and think negatively of them. From a financial perspective a person is better off keeping their mortgage amount around 25% or less of take-home pay. There are several reasons for this: 1) It can help alleviate a lot of stress by softening your monthly bills. 2) It can free up cash flow in case of an emergency. 3) It can earn you more revenue by placing the freed up cash in an account where you could make some money off of it. With what happened in the housing bubble people could’ve made a lot more money if their cash wasn’t’ tied up in their home. As with everything else it’s a choice we make as to how we live our lives and how we manage our money so it's certainly your call and no one should begrudge you regardless of the decision you make. I guarantee you though that if you're pretty much living paycheck because of your high mortgage payment, life will be much more enjoyable if you move to a home that won't stress you out as much. |
Author: John Mann |