Apr. 17, 2003 - 16:35 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

I Wonder

Are we in the cuckoo's nest or are we perchance cuckoo ourselves ? Here we are with the economy down the tubes, city, state and government services have been cut back so much that the old days of long lines and insufficent help are back once again. Regardless of taking numbers and folowing signs saying which direction to take, those old mind numbing, foot killing lines that hardly move are back again. What used to take a few minutes now can take hours.

Shrunken Motor Vehicle Departments where one goes to get Auto license plates, driver's licenses and driver records (tickets and offenses against the city and state gods) have crept to a barely discernable crawl. It can become a major expedition, usually across town, parking in a crowded parking lot hoping to find a place to sit when finally getting in and taking a number to wait for a turn.

Seems to be that same way through the spectrum of civil services for us of the lower classes. We are merely secondary in the scheme of life and feel that we are once again herded and corraled like cattle. Offices are in smaller spaces with fewer employees than ever before it looks to me like the trend is ever downward.

For years big business has been shipping manufacturing rights and facilities to foreign countries because cheap labor is available and recently they have been shipping some office functions too, caring not whether the foreign workers are treated fairly or decently recompensed.

The major failures of big businesses recently because of greedy manipulation of figures, giving the CEO's and biggies super bonuses and stock options and allowing them to sell out before the grim facts appear, have caused major layoffs here in the USA.

The consequent disappearance and decay of our factories and infrastructure have also put our country in a bad position. Those factors and loss of income to those laid off has caused taxes taken in by government to be sadly lacking which cannot seem to support the needed public services.

So Joe Blow who has been laid off and is actively seeking work now has to spend the extra day or so getting his driver's license renewed or new license tags or has to deal with some other arm of bureaucracy and is falling further behind in the race for survival.

I will have to plead total ignorance as to the ways of our country and current economic philosophy that has our upper echelon entranced ? Along with selling the same line of thinking to the knee jerkers. How can war cause our economy to make a swift recovery from this sad situation we are in ? Big businesses down-sizing, manufacturing long gone to foreign countries, un-employment at an all time high, investors holding on to their ill gained lucre, money has to all intents and purposes become non-existent.

We are now spending incalculable billions of dollars, materiel, humans while further bleeding our natural resources once again which were sorely depleted by World War Two and consequent military actions to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now just how can we balance that to our plus side ? I Wonder . . . . . . . . . .

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