Sunday, February 22, 2009
Political Royalty
by
Molly the Robin
My name is Molly and I am an American robin. I learned to think by seeing myself in car door mirrors. I am a mother who has had several broods of hatchlings. A fellow wrote about my story in Animal Park. He only got half the story right as most people do. I use public school libraries which are often closed. I usually find windows or openings into schools. I only have to perch on a tree or bush or deck to watch television news, which is hardly worth the trouble most of the time.
I landed in the patio of a retiree who has a lush garden with many delicacies. There was a tablet of paper on a table and I read what she had written. I heard her on the telephone talking very passionately about politics and she said that she would like to write a column for a newspaper because she had never done it. So here is her column, a real American retiree from your educational system:
What we have here in the United States of America is our very own political royalty who ride in luxury limousines to luxury homes sometimes on government planes to luxury hotels at luxury resorts and back to the luxury limousines to one of their luxury homes where they feast on the finest organic free range meats, seafood, and the finest and freshest organic vegetables and beautiful fruits few of us citizens can afford.
As a taxpaying citizen standing in line for everything, standing in line at the airport, at the supermarket, at the DMV, waiting at the doctor's office, waiting and standing in line while the political royalty whose salaries we pay live another kind of luxury life. A life of privilege which I cannot afford. I only pay them so they can afford it without using their own money.
Meanwhile, for the actual job I pay them to do, which is to make laws to keep us free and safe seems to be lost somewhere. Let's see, roads, bridges, trains, unsafe lakes, rivers and drinking water polluted, cities crime ridden, industry jobs outsourced. Household products foreign made, a question about my credit card takes me to a foreign land. My groceries, fruits and vegetables are mostly imports. What- we can't grow our own grapes or broccoli anymore? We can't make a wrench, a wreath or a towel anymore.
Crimes in the public schools have increased when they should have decreased 20 years ago. The obscenities on TV and the movies have become commonplace and accepted. This is our America today.
The superstate that has been created in your country is for the benefit primarily of those in the national government, lobbyists and the industries the lobbyists represent, often to the detriment to the majority of the American people. A new slogan has emerged for the republic: A country for the few, by the few but of the many.
I came across a old newspaper article about your military building new bases and homes and recreational facilities including golf courses and pools in the Philippines costing a billion dollars when the dollar was worth double or more than it is today. Well, at that time the U.S. military just assumed the Philippine government would permit them to stay another 100 years. It did not happen and that billion dollars worth of construction was lost.
Now, that does not compare to the amount of money lost and stolen in Iraq which is now in the tens of billions of dollars. If we included the waste, fraud and abuse in domestic spending it is in the trillions of dollars. What lessons have been learned by the national government about spending the people's resources? That's something you've never seen discussed on the television networks.
It really is expensive maintaining an empire and the least of it has been in propping up dictators in the name of freedom around the world: Marcos in the Philippines, Shah in Iran and many more you can read about in the book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer.
The irony is that in the United States has one of the most expensive educational systems in the world, yet the majority of the American people are blissfully unaware of their country's own history-foreign or domestic.
Simon Bolivar said something that might have some applicability: It is a terrible truth that it costs more strength to maintain freedom than to endure the weight of tyranny.
I'll be flying off now. It's getting late.
by
Molly the Robin
My name is Molly and I am an American robin. I learned to think by seeing myself in car door mirrors. I am a mother who has had several broods of hatchlings. A fellow wrote about my story in Animal Park. He only got half the story right as most people do. I use public school libraries which are often closed. I usually find windows or openings into schools. I only have to perch on a tree or bush or deck to watch television news, which is hardly worth the trouble most of the time.
I landed in the patio of a retiree who has a lush garden with many delicacies. There was a tablet of paper on a table and I read what she had written. I heard her on the telephone talking very passionately about politics and she said that she would like to write a column for a newspaper because she had never done it. So here is her column, a real American retiree from your educational system:
What we have here in the United States of America is our very own political royalty who ride in luxury limousines to luxury homes sometimes on government planes to luxury hotels at luxury resorts and back to the luxury limousines to one of their luxury homes where they feast on the finest organic free range meats, seafood, and the finest and freshest organic vegetables and beautiful fruits few of us citizens can afford.
As a taxpaying citizen standing in line for everything, standing in line at the airport, at the supermarket, at the DMV, waiting at the doctor's office, waiting and standing in line while the political royalty whose salaries we pay live another kind of luxury life. A life of privilege which I cannot afford. I only pay them so they can afford it without using their own money.
Meanwhile, for the actual job I pay them to do, which is to make laws to keep us free and safe seems to be lost somewhere. Let's see, roads, bridges, trains, unsafe lakes, rivers and drinking water polluted, cities crime ridden, industry jobs outsourced. Household products foreign made, a question about my credit card takes me to a foreign land. My groceries, fruits and vegetables are mostly imports. What- we can't grow our own grapes or broccoli anymore? We can't make a wrench, a wreath or a towel anymore.
Crimes in the public schools have increased when they should have decreased 20 years ago. The obscenities on TV and the movies have become commonplace and accepted. This is our America today.
The superstate that has been created in your country is for the benefit primarily of those in the national government, lobbyists and the industries the lobbyists represent, often to the detriment to the majority of the American people. A new slogan has emerged for the republic: A country for the few, by the few but of the many.
I came across a old newspaper article about your military building new bases and homes and recreational facilities including golf courses and pools in the Philippines costing a billion dollars when the dollar was worth double or more than it is today. Well, at that time the U.S. military just assumed the Philippine government would permit them to stay another 100 years. It did not happen and that billion dollars worth of construction was lost.
Now, that does not compare to the amount of money lost and stolen in Iraq which is now in the tens of billions of dollars. If we included the waste, fraud and abuse in domestic spending it is in the trillions of dollars. What lessons have been learned by the national government about spending the people's resources? That's something you've never seen discussed on the television networks.
It really is expensive maintaining an empire and the least of it has been in propping up dictators in the name of freedom around the world: Marcos in the Philippines, Shah in Iran and many more you can read about in the book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer.
The irony is that in the United States has one of the most expensive educational systems in the world, yet the majority of the American people are blissfully unaware of their country's own history-foreign or domestic.
Simon Bolivar said something that might have some applicability: It is a terrible truth that it costs more strength to maintain freedom than to endure the weight of tyranny.
I'll be flying off now. It's getting late.
