A Worst-Case Scenario

It is no small secret that America has slowly been transforming from a democratic republic (the type of government described in our Constitution) into a socialist oligarchy. Most every politician in office today is a socialist to one degree or another.
America becoming openly socialist wouldn't be a worst-case scenario - it may be a best-case scenario. Other countries that have become openly socialist have remained economically stable, although perhaps with a less-than-pleased population.
One bad thing I see in the current election is Obama. Forget about his possible ties to an old terrorist, or that his middle name is Hussein. Rather, look at his policies and solutions. His policies are openly socialist, but he refuses to call it by that name. Instead, he touts all these plans in the name of "preserving the middle class". He knows how to tickle ears and say what people want to hear without explaining the consequences of his plans.
He wants to require businesses to offer health coverage to all workers. This sounds good to the average American listening to his speech - "he want's to give me health coverage. Great!" The consequences of this? Higher costs to employers means that they will have to cut costs somewhere else in order to keep their profits from going down. By doing this, it will essentially be cutting American jobs through layoffs, reducing the quality of American-made products through lower-cost materials, and ultimately sending more jobs overseas.
He wants to raise minimum wage to over $9 an hour by 2011. Again, this means higher costs for employers, but sounds good to the average Joe listening to the speeches. In actuality, this means, once again, more job layoffs and companies sending jobs overseas.
Obama claims he will combat the side effects of his proposals by offering tax cuts to companies that keep jobs in America, and raising taxes on companies that ship jobs overseas. However, the tax cuts will more than likely be fractional compared to the actual costs incurred by companies. So, rather than fixing the economy by reforming health care and minimum wage, it will result in more American businesses relocating overseas completely, or straight out closing.

Now all of this is not essentially socialism. But the government take-over of failing businesses? This is the dictionary definition of socialism - government control of industry. Rather, what has been happening for sometime, and what Obama proposes more of, is actually closer to fascism. A true fascist regime only exists following a total economic collapse of a nation - which hasn't happened in America YET. But the definition of fascism is allowing the individual to retain private ownership of industry while the government dictates how the business must be run.

Fascism - individual retains private ownership of property and industry, while government dictates how industry will be run. This is the current state of America.
The major purpose of fascism is simply to keep the dictator in control. I can easily picture Obama becoming the first American dictator. Many researchers have said that America is at the same pinnacle as Rome was before it's collapse.

Socialism - individual retains private ownership of property, while the government at large owns and operates industry. In reality, many socialist and communist countries still allow some small businesses to operate under individual control - Cuba still allows some restaurants to operate under individual control, but dictate how the business will be run.
The major purpose of socialism is to eliminate classes - the government plays Robin Hood. This is the essence of the American welfare state, through taxing the rich to benefit the poor. Those who espouse this type of government are often existing in the lower class and enjoy the idea of a classless society, because the government promises that everyone will be in the middle class. In actuality, everyone becomes a member of the lowest class, often surviving just above poverty level.

Communism - the individual no longer exists, and belongs to the government. There is no such thing as personal property or private industry. The government holds tyrannical control over the people, dictating how every aspect of a person's life is carried out.
In the real world, such as China and Cuba, the individual does still exist and there is still some small degree of personal property and private industry.

Ballot Access

If someone wants to run for office, all they have to do is file their name and intent with the local recorder, right?
Wrong.
This story may be true for some local offices, but for statewide elections, the trial to get your name onto the ballot is often far from easy. If you've ever wondered how there could be over 200 organized political parties in the US, but often only Republican and Democrat choices on the ballot, now you know.
Ballot access has been around since the drafters of the constitution implemented the voting process. The original idea behind ballot access was well-intentioned: you don't want to have everybody in the state putting their name on the ballot, ending up with 3,000 choices to sort through. To this end, the states implemented a requirement that any potential candidate must submit, along with their name and intent to run for office, a list of signatures showing that they had support among their peers. The requirements for this list were nominal - perhaps 10-20 signatures, sometimes only 5.
This continued all well and good for several years, until the DNC and the GOP became the big boys. They got together and decided they wanted to stay the big boys. In order to guarantee this, they decided to make it easy for their candidates to get on the ballot, and hard for anyone else. To this end, most states now allow any official party candidate to be automatically placed on the ballot if that party received a certain number of votes in the previous election. However, if your party has not received a required number of votes, you must submit a list of signatures. But the requirements for this list are no longer so easy to fulfill. Many states require that petitioners collect a number of signatures equal to 1% of the state population, and that the signatures can only be collected between certain dates before the deadline to be put on the ballot.
South Carolina is by far the worst state for ballot access. They have the largest signature requirement within the shortest window, and have a maximum rate that may be paid to the petitioners. South Carolina has also taken away the write-in provision present in most other state's ballots.
Next time your considering a candidate, ask them what their position is on ballot access and watch them stutter and stammer before going on to the next question. So far, the only parties willing to address the ballot access issue are the smaller ones.

The Original Illegal Immigrants

In 1620, 102 people decided to leave their home land and travel to a new life in hopes of making things better for their descendants. They arrived in a new land as unwelcomed guests, and could not speak the language. They made little effort to learn the native language, but had no qualms about taking precious resources away from those who were there first. These unwelcomed guests continued to take more land, and soon all the original people were either killed or shuffled off into reservations.

In 2007, many people decided to leave their home land and travel to a new life in hopes of making things better for their descendants. They arrived in a new land as unwelcomed guests, and could not speak the language. A few tried hard to learn the native language, some made no effort; all took precious resources away from those who were there first. Who knows how the story will continue.

Whats the difference between these people? The original illegal immigrants are now hailed as heroes, while the modern illegal immigrants are ridiculed. Both came into a new land in search of a better life, unable to speak the language but in need of resources. Several groups want to build a giant fence to keep any more illegal immigrants from coming in, and want to ship all of the current illegal immigrants back to where they came from.

If you want to get rid of the illegal immigrants, start packing. With this mind set, unless you are a native american or descendant, you have no more right to this land than the modern illegal immigrants. Just because we've been here for 400 years, does this give us a right to dictate how someone else's land is to be used? Will Mexican families have to be established for 400 years in order to get proper respect as human beings?

America is a country founded by racists, and continues to be built upon a foundation of racism. The hottest topics continue to be between blacks and whites, but the most potent racism right now is against hispanics.

Blame-Shifter Bush

Bush already knows that he has lost the war in Iraq. Now he is just trying to make sure he doesn't have to take the blame for it.

Right now, he's trying to push the blame over to the Democratic-controlled congress. He keeps whining like a 3-year old, and since congress won't give him what he wants, it will be their fault for the failure in Iraq, not his.

What Bush wants is to keep the troops there until next election. If congress gives him this, the next president will inherit the war. Then, whatever happens will be his/her fault, instead of Bush's fault.

New Element Discovered

A new ultra-dense element has been discovered by scientists. This element cannot be penetrated by anything, including well-reason logic. The largest concentration of this new element is beleived to be in the vacinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., in Washington, D.C., although other large concentrations are now known to exist. It is also believed that this element may be scattered in small quantities throughout the entire world.

So, heres the deal. Bush decided to go over and "liberate" Iraq. When he went over, he had the backing of congress. No surprise there, since congress was full of elephants.
He got Prime Minister Blair to send some of his troops over as well.

Now that the war has been going on for several years, the Brittish commanders set a deadline for troop withdrawals. They told the Iraqi government, "this is when we're leaving. You better be ready." So the Iraqi soldiers got their rears in gear and were ready to defend their country when the Brittish left.

But Bush, in all his brilliance, keeps saying that he won't go until the Iraqis are ready. Now think about it. If you have someone helping you, and they say that they will stay until you don't need them anymore, how much motivation will you have to get to the point where you don't need their help? Of course its easier to just let them do the work.

The asses in congress, though they may be, have realized this. They see the need to set a definite date for troop withdrawals so that the Iraqis will realize, "hey, they might actuall leave and we'll have to take over."

But Bush doesn't like this. He claims that he will veto any defense spending bill that has a withdrawal deadline. However, the congress has a Democrat majority, who keep saying that they will only pass a bill that has a withdrawal deadline.

So who will win? My bet is, congress. Congress has the power of the purse strings. Bush's war money is going to run out sooner or later. Of course, this won't be his fault; he will be pinning the blame on congress for not giving him money, so the failure of the war is their fault.

Bush has said hes willing to sit down and talk with the congressional leaders, by which he means he wants to hear them say that they will do it his way.

Even with this proposed deadline for withdrawal, and the Democratic-lead congress, I'm not so sure that a defense spending bill would be voted down party lines. Bush has been losing many faithful Republicans due to his wonderful management of the country, and I'm guessig that many Republicans will be voting with the Democrats in favor of a definite deadline for troop withdrawal. The Democratic majority may be able to get the initial bill passed, but it will take a two-thirds majority to override Bush's veto.

We are all on drugs, yeah....

So, this semesters, I'm doing my paramedic pharmacology class. For part of this, we have to write a term paper on something drug-related. In doing this, I discovered some things that even surprised me.

It takes an average of 12 years to develop a new drug, from formulation to FDA approval. However, the pharamceutical company must file for it's patent on the drug once the new formulation is created. This patent is only good for 20 years, and cannot be renewed upon commercial viability. So, 12 years on this 20-year patent is gone by the time a company can actually sell the drug.

After this formulation, the drug company starts animal testing. This determines the potential safety and efficacy of the drug.

After this pre-clinical phase has shown some potential for the drug, the company must file an investigational application with the FDA before it can begin human testing.

By the time the drug company is ready to submit an official application for the drug, it will have conducted research on nearly 5,000 people in a minimum of three seperate double-blind clinical studies. The final FDA approval process then takes up to three years before the manufacturer finally receives permission to sell the drug.

So at the end of this process, the drug company only has about 8 years of exclusive rights to market the drug that has cost the pharma company nearly $1,000,000,000 to develop. However, there is a chance that even after this one-billion dollar drug has made it past clinical trials, the FDA will not grant approval.

And only about 1/3 of all new compounds will ever make it past the second clinical trial. So for every drug that is approved at a cost of one billion dollars, about 2 drugs will never make it to approval stage, each at a cost of about $100,000,000.

Then you see the commercials about how "grandma shouldn't have to decide between eating and taking her pills." Have you ever stopped to think about what people did before they had all these pills? And how many of grandma's problems are caused by other pills, so the doctor gives her another prescription to fix the side effect of this prescription, and soon grandma is taking a handful of pills each day, just because the doctor told her to.

The next time you see a politcal ad about the need for stricter regulation on the pharmaceutical companies, just think about the 1.2 billion dollar price tag on that little pill up in the cabinet. If you start to limit the money that drug companies can make, you take away their incentive to develop new drugs.

Open Ballot Access

There are over 200 organized, active national political parties in the United States.

Most people only know of the Democrats and the Republicans.

A few people are beginning to hear of some other parties, such as the Libertarians, the Green Party, and other so-called third parties. And they are so-called because the Democrats and Republicans have no right call this a two-party system.

If there is so much choice out there, why do we generally see only the Democracts and the Republicans on our ballots at election time? The answer, of course, is that the Democrats and Republicans don't want you to see the other parties.

The state legislatures, full of elephants and asses (hereafter referred to as Republicrats), did their best to make it near-impossible for any other party to get put on the ballot.

Ballot access laws have been around since the birth of our representative republic (America is NOT a democracy!), and for good reason. Getting put on the ballot should not be so easy that every Tom, Dick, and Harry can be named as a candidate. The first access laws simply required that a candidate have a handful of signatures, say 15-25.

The new ballot access laws that have been enacted by our wonderful Republicrats require that candidates be able to present anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 signatures, and some states require that those signatures can only be collected in a 4-month window before the election.

Unless, of course, your party received a certain number of votes in the previous election, in which case you are granted automatic ballot access. Ever wonder why Republicrats aren't knocking on your door, asking you to sign an access petition?

If you want to make a big difference, write a letter to your state representives, including your governor, and ask them to reform ballot access to allow all parties an equal chance. Write a letter to the editor. Start your own political blog. After all, isn't America supposed to be the land of opportunity? Unless, of course, you happen to come from Mexico.