TheWiseOldFart

Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart [All governments are bad, some are just worse than others.] This was a line I heard about seventy years ago, and remains accurate to this day. I was born in the United States, and therefore I can only attest to my own country and how it treats or mistreats its people. However, people around the world are virtually the same and want the same things for themselves and their loved ones. I can tell you one thing without reservation: the quality and competence of America’s government has declined throughout my lifetime. Professional politicians have become focused on greed for great power and great wealth, and less interested in serving the people of our nation. Over the last nine years, the quality of those leading our nation has diminished to a level impossible to describe. A major cause for our government’s demise is clearly on the shoulders of the electorate. Voting for a party, and rejecting the most qualified candidates has given us men and women who are not on...

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart The word is “corruption.” If you enjoyed the CBS television series, “The Good Fight,” you might remember stories about “Memo 618.” In the show it was intended to reveal government corruption related to our federal court system. It was a metaphor. MEMO 618 BASED ON REALITY On February 19, 1942, FDR signed executive order 9066. It established Japanese interment camps within the United States. In 2002 George W. Bush created an internment camp for “suspected terrorists” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It remains open today. Thousands of American citizens, with Japanese heritage, were placed in internment camps without legal process. Sites included Tule Lake, California; Minidoka, Idaho; Manzanar, California; Topaz, Utah; Jerome, Arkansas; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Poston, Arizona; Granada, Colorado; and Rohwer, Arkansas. Young, male family members were frequently removed from the camps to work in other parts of our country. This remains one of our nation’s...

Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart   On August 14, 1935, the greatest President in history signed the Social Security Act. Contributions from both employer and employee would guarantee every working man and woman an income after retirement. It would cost the federal government nothing. Everything our government tells you is a lie, or at best a ‘half-truth.’ I know because I am one of 66 million American seniors who receive Social Security. Many of us have no other income than what we receive from our many years of participation in the only perfect law in our nation’s history. For our entire working lives we and our employers participated in the program, a plan intended to be self-sustaining. However, our corrupt government began diverting funds designed to provide for the retirement of our oldest citizens almost immediately, and in the 21 st century our only source of income is in danger of experiencing alterations which could adversely affect our most vulnerable citizens. This is another at...

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart   The fact that Trump and his Klan are lifetime criminals is irrefutable. However, the mainstream media continues to support our nation’s greatest traitor. Not once over the last eight years have they been truthful about the evil that is Donald John Trump. Throughout the 2016 campaign the media gave him five-times more coverage than all other candidates combined, proving that they supported the man who would later attempt to destroy the government of the United States. Our Founding Fathers established several safeguards in the Bill of Rights designed to protect the American people from corruption in our government. The most effective rule protected the press from prosecution for exposing crimes committed by our elected officials. Over the last 40+ years a once respected fourth estate has itself become corrupted. Factual stories about Trump prove that he and his supporters are above the law and confirm that our justice system is not blind and i...

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart   There is no government in the world of developed nations more corrupt than the one occupying seats in the Capitol Building of the United States of America. They are the primary reason why I am ashamed to be an American citizen in the 21 st century. Let me tell you a story. There was a man born in Brooklyn on June 14, 1946. He was the son of a moderately wealthy family which according to other family members offered little more than food and lodging for their new addition. It was not a home filled with love and support. In 1959, at the age of 13, the young man was removed from aloveless home and placed in a military-style boarding school. There was nothing remarkable about him, he was nothing more than another castoff from a wealthy family who chose to have someone else raise their child. After his tenure was complete, he was accepted by Fordham University. His father, a New York businessman, found this less than adequate, paid for a defer...