America
is a strange place. Liberals get emotionally distraught that the
Founding Fathers stuck Second Amendment rights in the Constitution.
For American citizens to possess firearms is considered to be
dangerous. Yet, it is quite alright for Americans to possess deadly
green mambas.
Mambas
are large, fast, and very poisonous African snakes whose bite is
usually fatal. Their venom is neurotoxic and cardiotoxic. It attacks
the central nervous system and shuts down the lungs and heart. On
August 20 a Comcast workman was installing an underground cable outside
an apartment building in Hollywood, Florida, when he was bitten by a
green mamba.
Captain
Ernie Jillson, head of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue's Venom Response Unit,
said the green mamba probably only delivered a warning bite instead of
a lethal one. The Comcast worker was saved by antivenin. It is
unclear how the dangerous snake, which is still on the loose, was
identified. How many Americans could identify a green mamba? Perhaps
the cable company worker was an immigrant from Africa able to recognize
the snake.
No
one knows where the snake came from. According to the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel, 187 green mambas have been imported into the US as pets
since 2004. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission says that all
people licensed to own or sell green mambas in the area have their
snakes accounted for.
Americans
who tire of their pet pythons, when they grow too large, have been
dumping the snakes in the Everglades, where a large breeding population
now exists that is destroying the remaining ecology of the Everglades
not already destroyed by real estate developers and sugar plantations.
Will green mambas be the next immigrant invader?
Try
to imagine what it is like living in a house with a mamba. Are bedroom
doors tightly shut at night and carefully opened in the mornings? Do
you first check to make sure the snake is still in its container before
moving around the house in the morning? Imagine coming home and
finding the container empty. Strikes me as far more stress than living
with a handgun in the house.
I
would put the stress level from a mamba right up there with the stress
our politicians create for us. We never know when "our government
will next strike at our livelihood and liberty.
The
White House Office of Management and Budget just announced that the
federal government will be running trillion dollar annual budget
deficits for the next decade. If the past is a guide, this is an
underestimate.
Obama
says he is going to attack the deficit by getting entitlement spending
under control. He means Social Security and Medicare. Getting them
under control means reducing the funding. Americans have paid taxes all
their lives for retirement pensions and health care, but Obama is going
to cut the promised benefits in order to fund his wars in Afghanistan
and Pakistan and to pay for new US military bases in Colombia, South
America.
We
are now into the third presidential term in which the US government
remains mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inheriting two wars
didn't stop Obama from starting a third one in Pakistan and from
threatening more wars.
These
wars bring no benefits to American citizens, only high costs, but the
wars bring political contributions to the politicians from the interest
groups that profit from the wars.
Where
is the World War I, World War II, and Korean War excess-profits tax?
The answer is that instead of paying the US Treasury, the war
profiteers pay the politicians.
Obama's
Budget Director, Peter Orszag, says the US is in a "dire fiscal
situation and requires "serious steps to put our nation back on a
sustainable fiscal path. However, halting pointless wars is not part
of the Obama administration's solution. The wars will continue.
Orszag says the US will be put on "a fiscally sustainable path by
"slowing the rate of health care cost growth in the long run.
Orszag
says that health care reform will not only be deficit neutral--that is,
provide no new services--but also "will incorporate changes that will
help reduce the deficit. The budget is to be balanced on the backs of
Americans denied health care. And you thought your private health
insurer was evil.
Many thanks to Orszag for a clear statement of US government priorities.
In
the face of such clarity, why are democratic groups associated with
Obama pushing a "health care reform that will reduce health care?
The
attitude of government toward taxpayers is no different at the state
and local levels. Some conservatives still suffer from the delusion
that government is more accountable the closer it is to the people.
Recently,
NPR reported that it was the Correctional Officers Union that was
behind California's "three-strikes law. Once that unjust law passed,
California's prison population increased five-fold. The Correctional
Officers Union grew dramatically in membership. Of the $10 billion
annual cost of California's prison system, 70% goes for salaries and
administration. One in ten correctional officers makes $100,000 a year.
What
was sold to a gullible public as an "anti-crime measure was just
another way for an organized interest group to pick the taxpayers'
pockets.
Even the "clunkers law divided the spoils between two interest groups. Car dealers got
taxpayers'
help in reducing their unaffordable inventories, and parts
manufacturers saved their business by having "clunkers limited to
vehicles made in 1984 or afterwards. Older cars did not qualify
for the trade-in subsidy, which was hyped as a way of getting
fuel-inefficient and polluting vehicles out of service.
All
you need to know about "governments close to the people can be learned
by examining the property tax response to falling real estate values,
foreclosures, and homelessness. Jurisdictions everywhere are raising
the property tax.
In America government always comes first. The citizen last. The transformation from citizen to serf has been completed.
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