Hey Buddy can you Spare a Dime

Every day we read headlines and hear news, scarier than anything M. Night Shyamalan could dream up for our entertainment. Whether it's a new terrorist threat or a coastline ruined by the foolish oil industries who can't control their wells. While many financial empires are teetering, others have already fallen off into the abyss. We curse our enslavement to fossil fuels yet no one has the heart to take that first brave step toward alternative forms of energy.

We've already lost our manufacturing jobs to the likes of China and Korea, now our technology firms are fleeing to India and elsewhere. As a prime example try finding an American flag that is not made in China. How do you feel when you call tec-support and the person who answers sounds more like a taxi driver than a person with enough knowledge to assist you? Don't even get me started on trying to understand complex instructions from a person who speaks English as a second language.

Just how will we be able to turn our suffering economy around when the buying class i.e. those who work for a living are losing the wage war against inflation. Fifty-five percent of American workers are out of work, have had their wages reduced or are now working reduced hours for less pay. Most of the other forty-five percent working and making full pay are concerned about the future of their job. They are making no plans for large ticket items, such as houses, cars, or tickets to a Yankee game. Big business need to understand the basic fact that until the working man has some money in his pocket the economy will not turn around. Mr. CEO, I know a good stock value is important to your bottom line but a share of stock doesn't buy your product. If you can't pay your employees a decent wage, who do you think is going to purchase the goods you manufacture?

I hear so many preach the values of a free market economy and the global market. If our economy collapses, it won't be free market it'll be anarchy. It well might be the time to reinstate a tariff system to help offset other nations from flooding our markets with underpriced goods. I understand this might affect our sales in other countries but we need to find some way to level the playing field if we are to continue as the international consumer country. It is not only lower wages that undercut our prices it manipulation by some foreign governments as well.

If I may speak in hindsight, just how could we permit our voracious thirst for oil allow us to let a foreign based corporation drill for oil off our shores with no safety redundancies in place for failures. To have this megalith company look us in the eye and say, my bad, and there is nothing they can do about it now is appalling. For thirty or forty years now, the tree huggers have campaigned against off shore drilling. They are always citing all the dangers to our shoreline if an accident should occur. Well now, it looks as if they have been right all along and maybe we should have listened instead of laughed.

As for dealing with terrorists, it is like dealing with most social issues, there are no simplistic answers. Every terrorist is some ones hero just as every hero is a terrorist to his enemy. That being said I fail to see any gains by the terrorist groups that are attaching the western countries. That is unless all they desire is to polarize a people against them. I should think a group would achieve so much more with us backing them than by attacting us and thus turning us against them. As proof of my point, I need only to point out the great strides the Irish have made in getting what they want. If you compare what they had with four or five hundred years of war to how much they've achieved in these few years of peace it is easy to see the correct road to travel.

There is one other point I'd like to bring up here. I'm sure it will only serve to show my ignorance but I am curious. I hear so many muslins condemning the west for being prejudiced solely because of a few radicals. This may be true, I can understand their concerns, and yet I haven't heard one of these peaceful muslins condemning these radicals who are committing violence in the name of the religion of peace. You say violence is not a part of your religion yet it appears to me that your silence on this only supports it.

I truly believe our problems are solvable if we only persevere. Our country has been in tough binds before and somehow we always survive. If you think about it, we got thirty million Americans to watch the World Cup and if you can accomplish that, these other problems should be easy.