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OK, get ready, here comes another of my occasional rants against the current administration. I just can't help it, a story in the news today just set me off. It was about FEMA, (Federal Emergency Management Agency) a government agency that is supposedly there to help us in an emergency. So what could an agency like this do wrong? PLENTY! The most recent thing that they are doing, is selling trailers. What the heck is a government agency doing selling trailers you might ask? It seems that they have about 120,000 of these things. They are supposed to be used to help people that are forced out of their homes. As a matter of fact, after a very painfully long wait, some finally got to New Orleans and there are families living in them. So what is wrong with selling the excess trailers? Plenty! First of all there are reports that they are contaminated with Formaldehyde. Contaminated means that there is more than the safe amount of this chemical in them. It has been reported that FEMA is going to continue to sell them anyway. They said that they will tell people before they buy them, that they might have too much of the chemical in them. Wow, what sports. Will it be in the tiny print in the center of some brochure? What the heck are they doing with too much of anything? Are they so mismanaged that they overbuy to the point where they will have to sell off tens of thousands of trailers? I wonder what company made the killing on selling these to them in the first place? This is the same agency that has been letting people down for a couple of years now. Remember when they had trucks sitting all over the place, with ice in them for the residents of New Orleans, but none were in that city? Remember the lousy job they did with the hurricane damage in Florida?

Next rant is about the VA (Veterans Administration). This is basically a support agency for veterans that come back from wars or have served in the military. We used to view this agency with respect, when I served in the military. Not so any more. They have carelessly lost many of the veteran's data by not having enough safeguards. People working for the VA have taken home laptops computers with personal information of veterans on them and lost them. This leaves veterans and their families open to fraud and identity theft. Thanks guys. It is so bad now, that soldiers who have become disabled and are returning from Iraq, or have returned, are being encourage to join a law suit filed against the VA. It is hoped by the parties suing that ultimately they will have between 300,000 and 800,000 vets joining the law suit. They claim that money is being withheld from disabled veterans for inordinate periods of time and that if you are turned down, it takes well over a year for an appeal to be processed. They also state that the VA is taking post traumatic stress disorder claims and stating that this is a pre existing condition, when vets put in for relief, because they are not able to work. On top of all this, even obvious disabilities take far too long to collect on, forcing some vets to seek welfare. Shame, shame, shame! Add to this the horrible conditions that have been cited at some of the administration's hospitals and you have an agency that has shown nothing but utter contempt for our fighting men and women.

The FDA (Food And Drug Administration) has completely let us down. You could see it coming. A couple of years ago we started hearing about Salmonella on some lettuce and scallions that got to the public. We should have known then that our food was not being monitored properly. Then we were told that our pet food was contaminated and pets began to kick off in different parts of the country. We will never really know how many died from this, because they were pets. What was sort of kept under the covers was the fact that this same pet food was given to farm animals, animals that we eat. Sure they said it was ok and not to worry, but by that time I don't think that anyone could believe them anymore. Then it happened, much of our seafood was contaminated. Where were the inspectors, what was the FDA doing? Are they even checking anything. They said they got it all and not to worry, it was only the seafood from China. But wait, we get seafood from many countries, was anyone checking to see if there was a problem with it from anywhere else? We never heard anything about that. The final straw was when we found out that it is now dangerous to brush our teeth. Yeah, China again and their chemical additives. I remember when a shipment of our beef was rejected by Japan because it had parts of the animals spine in it and they were afraid, rightfully so, that it could contain mad cow disease. This was a domestic product, ouch? Some canned foods are being recalled as I write this, because of a Botulism risk. This means that the cans could be in homes already and people may have opened them and eaten the contents.

Homeland Security, sounds great doesn't it? It makes you feel all safe and comfortable. We were told the idea for this new agency was to pull all the other agencies under one umbrella organization to foster cooperation. Funny I was just reading an article the other day that stated that many of the organizations under it, still are not cooperating fully with each other. I also see when money is allotted to fight terrorism, New York City doesn't seem to rate too high. Do you think that this might be because the state didn't carry Bush in the election? It sure looks that way when the old green stuff is being given out. New York has to be considered a prime target for terrorists, after all, it did have the twin towers taken down by them and several adjacent buildings, didn't it? Could it be that maybe, just maybe, this agency was established to give someone a nice big job and supply jobs to other party faithful?

I respect our military and they have to carry out the mandate given to them. Yet there is something very wrong when people who were in the reserve are being sent to Iraq for their 4th tour. Reserve units are for emergencies, if you deplete your reserve, you have nothing to fall back on. Every general since Alexander knew this and probably the ones before him. There is also something very wrong when our troops don't have the proper equipment, such as body armor and properly armored vehicles. When parents and loved ones of soldiers sent them bullet proof vests, the army threatened to court marshall anyone wearing one. Sure it made them look bad. This certainly doesn't seem to be the right course of action does it? What they were really saying was, it is ok for you to die, just don't put any heat on the military.

Lets get to the Executive Branch of government. It used to be that a president would see to it that the people got something. When I say the people, I am talking about your average working stiff. Under this administration, the little guy has not only gotten nothing, his economic position has fallen. Oh there are plenty of people that think this president is the greatest, but look at who they are. They are people with the funds to take advantage of the stock market and investments. He has been very kind to them. What about those people that have lost their jobs? Oh he says more people are working today than ever before. While this may be true, and it also may not because of the way these things are counted, we have to look at the quality of the jobs. If you lost a job paying $30.00 per hour and had to take a job paying $11.00 per hour, you are working, but you certainly are suffering. You might have to take a second job and because of this, you are hardly at home and still making less than your were before. I hate to say this, but there is no one in this administration that cares about your problems. Everything that is done is for the companies or fat cats. What was the real reason that we went into Iraq? Everyone knows that we shouldn't be there and that Sadam, evil as he was, was not part of the terrorists that attacked us and he didn't even like them. One reason we are there seems to be to provide fat contracts to companies who do shoddy work and have no one to regulate them there. They have made billions upon billions. When the figures are reported someday, the American public will be flabbergasted The other reason we are there might be a personal one, but I won't go into that. It has been reported that 80% of the foreign fighters going against us in Iraq are Saudis, yet there was our president holding hands with a Saudi Prince just last year. When the planes hit the towers, it was reported that all planes were grounded except for the Saudi Family's plane. We were promised a great drug plan for Medicare, but what did we get, a plan that gives the drug companies billions of dollars more. Why the administration hasn't even arranged for bulk buying of drugs which would reduce our costs. Not only that, the plan is not very good since it has large gaps where the person has to pay everything out of his pocket. Some plan. What administration has ever leaked the name of a CIA operative, risking the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of contacts around the world? Yep, this one. What administration pulled so many strings that even the most famous of news reporters that said anything against it was punished? Yep this one. What modern president has allowed people to be whisked away without charges and held indefinitely? Yep this one. Gee I can't think of one good thing that this administration has done for the little guy, not one. That is pretty shameful.

I love my country and I am sure that most of you out there do. What I don't like is the way it has spiraled down over the last 6 years or so. Nothing works anymore, everything is broken. Just try and get a passport and see how long that takes. So where are we at today? Well you can't trust what you eat, most of our industry has gone to China, so millions upon millions of people have been forced to take lesser paying jobs. Our vets are hurting because no one in government cares about them and the oil companies are raping us, even though there are many other forms of energy out there that we could be using, if the government pushed them. Houses are up for sale all over, because people can no longer afford to live in them, especially in the Northeast. We are fighting a totally unnecessary war, but we have been put in the position that if we get out, Iraq will fall under the domination of countries that hate us. We are buddy buddy with a country that is supplying many of the terrorists and they are doing nothing to stop them. All our records are carelessly treated by government agencies and are falling into the hands of criminals. Our disaster agencies are a disaster themselves. What has happened to us, how did we allow this to happen?