Can We be Fixed?

 

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today after another week of lock down with some rioting thrown into the mix. These are strange times indeed. Our world has been turned upside down. Our world is broken.

 

 

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I don’t know what to make of it. Will things ever get back to normal? There’s been communication from our school district that if classes resume in the fall there will be six feet between students, no cafeteria, and no recess for our elementary students. I’m not happy about this. How can they say NO RECESS?

 

Kids that age need to move.

 

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Then there’s the rioting, and it scares me. It wasn’t close to us by any means, but it could have been. What kind of world are we leaving to our kids?  We need to wake up. Our system is broken. We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results, but what can we do?

 

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I’m at a loss. The politicians say we must get out and vote, but for what? I think both parties have their own agendas and what do you do when you’re given two choices for president and you don’t like either one?

 

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I don’t have any answers at the moment, but there is at least one positive coming out of all this mess. People are coming together. Cops are marching along with protesters. Protesters are being heard. Yes, there’s destruction and looting, but communities are also coming together to clean up the mess. They’re helping the police by taking pictures of the destructors and looters with their phones and turning them over to the authorities. The people are coming together. Finally.

 

I don’t know what our new normal is going to be, but I do see some solidarity amidst all the chaos and that my friends is a good thing. Are all the problems solved? No. But we’ve taken a big step forward. What is our next step? I don’t know. Maybe limiting the terms of our congressmen and senators. Maybe limiting the amount someone can spend on a campaign. Maybe limiting the amount companies and organizations can contribute to a campaign. That way politicians can’t be bought. Well, theoretically anyway. 😉

How about you? Do you have any ideas how to fix our broken system? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!

Saving our Oceans

 

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today after taking last week off and I’m glad I did. I’ve got a full plate with my writing and I’m hoping these new revisions do the trick. 🙂

 

We shall see. I’ll keep you posted.

 

The other day, on social media there was a video floating around showing a diver in the middle of the ocean with miles of plastic bags and garbage around her. She was imploring all of us to take better care of our oceans.

 

Photo credit: Wilfredorrh on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND

 

This is a global problem that requires a global solution. We can pass all kinds of laws and create a million procedures in the USA, but it won’t do a shred of good if there isn’t global compliance.

Remember we only have one planet. In order for our planet to survive we need to keep the oceans alive and healthy. The oceans help distribute excess heat around our planet. They help regulate the CO2 in our atmosphere. Global warming would be an even bigger issue if it weren’t for our oceans.

Photo on Visual hunt

 We need other countries to be on board with saving our bodies of water. If we’re doing everything we can to keep them free of pollution while across the pond, China’s over there dumping all their garbage into the waters well you can see that our efforts are fruitless.

Why don’t we task the United Nations with coming up with a global environmental plan? Isn’t that what they’ve been organized to do? Create a world we can all live in. I know it’s not as sexy as stopping a third world war, but our species will survive longer because of it.

Photo credit: United Nations Photo on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

I would love to see a global task force set up to take care of the oceans. A representative from all the continents would meet and weigh in on the way we should do it. I have all kinds of ideas on how we can do it. All they have to do is ask. 😉

Photo on Visual Hunt

 I want to leave a healthy planet for our future generations. Don’ you? Do you have any ideas on ways we could do this? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!

 

My thoughts on “Dirty Money”

 

Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today after a busy week. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me life is getting busier and busier, and there aren’t enough hours in the day. I’ve made progress on my writing as well. I’ve completed the edits on one of my manuscripts and I’m super excited about this story. It’s coming together and it has evolved into such an amazing story. It’s my best work yet!

 

 

Photo on Visual Hunt

 

But enough about that, today I’d like to talk about a series I found on Netflix. It’ called “Dirty Money” and it was eye opening to say the least. There are six episodes and each one illustrates the level of corruption in our world and the corruption is global.

Photo credit: sushi the great on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

The first one caught my attention. It’s the story about how Volkswagen lied to consumers by stating they had anti-pollution devices installed on the VW Bug, when in fact they did not. The devices were actually disabled after they were tested in the factory by management.  They got caught, but no one went to jail.

Photo credit: opie0429 on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Another documentary in this same series that caught my attention is the story on how the bank HSBC laundered money for the drug cartels. It goes on to illustrate how high ranking bank officials knew it was happening but did nothing to stop it.

This makes the war on drugs a huge joke.

I don’t want to say too much about the actual stories because I don’t want to ruin it for everyone, but when you watch the series you’ll find a common theme throughout. The unbridled greed of corporate leaders and the lengths they’ll go to get those billions of dollars.

In the series, you’ll find very few people actually went to prison after getting caught. Out of the six episodes, there are only two instances of jail time. That’s horrible.

The one about Scott Tucker who was actually sentenced to sixteen years in prison after his payday scheme was discovered, shows the delusional thinking of corporate leaders.  It’s staggering.

Just a heads up. The last episode is on Trump. 🙂

Below is the link to the trailer. You’ll want to watch this series. Trust me.

 

 

American Greed

 

Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back and I’m here to talk about the world we live in today. After reading the book “Detroit: An American Autopsy,” I was upset. The level of corruption in this story was heartbreaking especially when you see the innocent lives that have been lost because of it.

I’m sad because the men in power put their own greed above the lives of these people. That in a nutshell is what’s wrong with our world today. This feeling that there isn’t enough. We have to have more. Where did this come from?

I know it’s a competitive streak. We all want to be the best, but what determines the best? What magical standards are we trying to achieve? The thing is we’re all as unique as snowflakes. Let’s celebrate that. If we were all comfortable in our own skins we wouldn’t feel the need to keep up with the Jones. We’d be too busy wallowing in our happiness to care what they were doing.

Photo via VisualHunt

          That’s why we as humans must become internally oriented. We must decide what makes us happy and work toward those goals and allow everyone else the same freedom. We’ll be so busy making ourselves happy we won’t have time to see what our neighbors are doing. If we let go of judging other people and they in turn let go of judging us, we’ll have a happier society.

I know what you’re thinking. Sure that takes care of the neighborhood when times are golden, but what about when times are tough?  Like they are now. That’s a good question and I’m here to tell you that we need to make a major shift in our society. We see what’s happening in cities like Detroit and Flint. We see how corruption destroyed people during the housing bubble, we see how the market is manipulated on Wall Street. We even see how the Catholic Church covered up abuse in their hierarchy, but we don’t do anything about it.  When I think about all those priests who abused kids in their parishes and got caught. It makes me sick. It makes me even more nauseous when I think about how the church covered up the abuse. They moved these priests around. Not one priest went to jail. Not one. We should’ve been marching at the steps of Rome over that one.

 

Photo credit: Greg Hayter via VisualHunt / CC BY

          It appears to me, there are two sets of laws in our country. The people in power can break the law and no one goes to jail.  The average Joe pulls one of their stunts and it’s a totally different story. It’s in the papers and on the news.  This has to change. There’s one set of laws for all of us. All of us. And it’s simple. If you break the law, you are held accountable. There are no excuses.  How do you feel about that? Leave a comment. I’d love to read how you feel!

To learn more about some of the points I brought up in this post click the links below:

My Thoughts on the Movie Spotlight: Corruption in the Catholic Church

My Thoughts on the Big Short

My Thoughts on Money Monster

Here I Go, Stepping into that Political Swamp…

 

Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’ve been diligently working on my story and I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished so far. I hope to wrap it up soon because I’ve got another story I want to work on. I’m sure you know how it is. 🙂

Today, I’d like to talk about our country. I told myself I wasn’t going to step into the political swamp this year, but I’ve been watching my Facebook feed and I’ve seen some pretty ugly disagreements between the Hillary supporters and the Trump supporters so I thought it was time to speak up.  To be honest, I don’t like either candidate, but I do love my country. The good ‘ole US of A for all its drudgery and broken dreams is still a pretty good place. I’m scared for my country. I’m scared because I’m not sure what kind of world we’re leaving for our children. I feel like we must do something now to avoid dumping a mess on them.

Photo via Visualhunt

          We have a corrupt system and we need someone to fix it. This is how bad it is: Look at the collapse of the housing market in the years of 2006-2008. The investment banks like Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan were actually bundling high risk mortgage-backed securities together and selling them as low risk. They were misrepresenting their mortgage bundles. This is an incredibly simplified explanation, but it is the truth. And the thing that amazes me is, not one person went to jail over this. This is Fraud. It’s against the law. How did these people avoid prosecution? People lost their homes, their retirement plans, and their jobs, but not one executive went to jail. Why is that?

Photo credit: National Museum of Denmark via Visual hunt / No known copyright restrictions

Sure these banks had to pay fines, but it was worth it to them because they made so much money misrepresenting their mortgage bundles that paying the fine was just another cost of doing business. The fines were a joke, they weren’t a deterrent. These are the people who have control of our political system. They are corrupt and they are running this country.

Am I the only one this bothers?

We need a President that isn’t worried about getting reelected. We need someone that will put the good of the US above his or her own ambitions. That person is hard to find. The political machine we have now is broken. It is so evident in this election. No one believes either candidate.

Where is Ross Perot when you need him?

Photo credit: Dallas Film Society Images via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC

 

No one believes the garbage the mainstream media is spewing  either. Right now, they have control over what we view and read. Controlling information is a very powerful place to be, wouldn’t you agree?

Did you know that 90% of our media is owned by SIX companies? They can bury an event or blow it out of proportion based on what they want us to believe. Doesn’t that scare you?

What can we do?

We can become informed. The internet for all its faults has opened our eyes by making the truth accessible. We become informed by reading alternative media and blogs. Information is power after all. We’ll be able to make better decisions based on this information. Start reading blogs like Zero Hedge and Drudge Report. They’re off the mainstream media and they’re spot on in their assessments.

Zero Hedge

Drudge Report

We as the people have power, too. We’re just not using it. We need to shake off our apathy and grow stronger and smarter by becoming more informed. That way we can be confident when we demand better service from our politicians. We have that right to demand this.

We pay their salaries.

They work for us.

So let’s stop them from working us over and make them roll up their sleeves and do their jobs.

Photo credit: ep_jhu via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC

What are your thoughts on our country’s condition? Share your thoughts on what we can do to improve our situation for our children. Leave a comment.  I’d love to hear from you!