America: Turning into a Third World Nation

I've been looking around lately, and I have been struck by how much our country has declined.

As I said, I've spent plenty of time in the Third World, and know what it looks like.

I know the society, the atmosphere, the laws...the aura.

And it is to my sad judgment that, recently, America is coming to resemble a Third World nation.

Delineated below are the reasons why:

RAW SEWAGE

The Third World smells.

Recently I have been picking up on a very familiar Third World smell...that of raw sewage.

Our sewer systems seem to be in such disrepair that you can actually smell the stuff in the open air.

One particular part of town has been so bad for so long that the smell of raw sewage has become an accepted fact

ROTTEN ROADS

Hey, the axle-breaking pot holes of the third world have come home to roost in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Have you seen the state of our roads lately?

Its getting to the point that driving on some of these things make you wonder about your suspension.

A lot of times I am driving and the road is so badly maintained I think something is wrong with my car.

The state of a bumpy secondary highway not too long ago, brought a lot of flashbacks.

ROAD BLOCKS

You just can't do Third World without coming across some type of roadblock or another.

Well, the home of the brave has become the land of the roadblock.

The sense of being temporarily detained by ignorant-looking, brutal, arrogant and sadistic 'military police' is a familiar experience.

Dejavu all over again when I have to stop at these random checkpoints and be asked where I am going and why while some ape in a uniform looks over my vehicle with high suspicion.

BAD TEETH

If there is one thing that is prevalent in the Third World, its bad teeth.

Why American teeth have deteriorated to the state they are in at the present is beyond me.

I mean, this is the land of Crest and Colgate.

Is there no more money to take care of your teeth, fellow Americans?

I have seen chick with some nice frontal teeth and an attractive balckness at both corners.

I have seen cracked, yellow, stained, missing, twisted, messed up teeth on so many Americans (many of them hard working) that I am starting to seriously wonder if we can afford dental care.

Hard fact: many of my working poor associates have complained to me that they cannot afford to have their teeth fixed.

GOVERNMENT BILLBOARDS

You don't see more billboards celebrating the government than in the Third World.

It could just be the face of the Imperious leader, or a reminder about what your supposed to be doing, or an outright gloat about how good things are and what a good job the government is doing – for example, “peace and prosperity” or “always forward, always progress.”

Right here in America I am starting to see more and more billboards....about government.

Maybe its a Homeland Security reminder to “say something” when you “see something.”

Or maybe its a recruitment for jail guards or police positions of one sort or another.

Sometimes its an outright threat, reminding you to use your seatbelt, not exceed the speed limit or smoke pot.

UNIFORMS

The Third World has more uniforms per square mile than anywhere else.

And the uniforms look like it belongs on a colonel or something, complete with lapels, fruit salad, spaghetti and whatever else you can throw on it.

Whether your the mailman, the police, an inspector or a tram operator, you are guarantees a ritzy looking uniform if you work for the government.

The country might be falling apart, but the smart uniforms remain as a reminder of whose in charge and how official those in charge really are.

You don't need me to mention the uniforms are making an appearance right here in America.

There are so many uniforms and so many 'agencies' issuing so many uniforms that is is hard to keep up.

Homeland Security, Border Patrol, ICE, NTSB, FBI, Sheriff, Police, Public Safety, US Marshalls, Army, National Guard, Postal Service, Traffic Control, Animal Control, IRS, CPS, Forest Rangers, Park Services all seem to have their own 'colonel' uniforms...many of them with an intimidating semi-

automatic strapped to the side.

Sometimes I don't even know who these people are parading around in their circus uniforms.

Recently I have been seeing a lot of black uniforms.

This I have not really seen in the Third World (they try to keep their uniforms festive, with different tinges of blue, green, white or tan), so its an American original...

...or maybe not so original.

You see, the black uniform is proper of fascist regimes like those of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler.

In that sense, America has acquired a refreshing variety of uniforms in the fascist historical mold.

THUGGISH POLICE

The police in the Third World are thugs, if not outright criminals.

In the Third World, the population lives in fear of the police, and for good reason.

In the Third World, the police have carte blanche to do whatever they want with you.

When encountering the police in the Third World you don't know if your going to leave with a friendly goodbye, a broken nose, a broken arm, if you're going to spend a week in prison or if you're going to be leaving at all because you end up DEAD.

Sound familiar?

The increasing brutality of police right here in American is not just becoming noticeable to fellow Americans, but is gaining headlines all over the world.

That's right, people in England, the Netherlands and Germany get a kick out of reading 'the latest American slaughtered loser' in their newspapers.

Like in the Third World, the police here are becoming a sort of funky god you have to kneel before – representatives of the dictatorship, not the people - sneering, menacing, arrogant, brutal enforcers who no court will hold into account.

DARKLY LIT / LOW A/C BUILDINGS

Notice the temperature in many businesses and government offices lately (not to mention the smell).

All too familiar.

The Third World government offices are all ill-lit and badly air conditioned or heated.

In addition, you find most of them in the darndest of places (at the corner of some decrepit relic – in the tenth floor of some half-completed sky scraper – in someone's house – at a strip mall).

And speaking of strip malls...that's exactly where the department of Motor Vehicles sent me to get my tags re-issued.

That's right.

The government is so broke now that it is outsourcing its bureaucracy to strip malls.

To Americans, that might be an embarrassing novelty, to me it's old Third World hat.

The same phenomenon is spreading to our franchise stores.

Was the temperature comfortable in your last visit to the supermarket?

How did that visit to the doctor or lawyer go at your friendly neighborhood strip mall?

STUFF BREAKS

In the Third World stuff breaks all the time.

A week doesn't pass where you have a collapsing bridge or overpass, a derailed train, a ruptured water main, ripped electrical cables, flooding, contaminated water, backed up or ruptured sewers.

Sound familiar?

That's right.

The US Government itself has said that a main threat to the safety of the country is a rotting infrastructure.

It's promising to do something at some time, but no promises so far.

Meanwhile you keep hearing about ruptured water mains, collapsing bridges, derailed trains, failing dikes, flooding, power failures, etc, etc ,etc.

In case you haven't noticed, our infrastructure is regularly breaking and nothing is reliable...and there is no money to fix it because we are so broke and our money is so mis-spent (just like the Third World) that there is not enough of it just to keep things running at home.

POOR TEACHERS

In the Third World, teaching is the next best profession to begging.

Teachers are considered humble, miserable, impoverished auxiliary workers.

They are paid next to nothing and can't really make living, just managing to scrape by somehow.

The same is happening here.

Teachers in America seem embarrassed to admit what they do for a living.

Teachers are regularly treated like trash by the parents, the school administrators and the students.

The teaching profession is becoming so bad that there now seems to be teachers shortages because no one wants to work for the untenable pay they are offering.

NO ACCOUNT TRAGEDIES

Yup.

Massive and stupid tragedies are common place in the Third World.

Like a bus full of passengers going off a cliff.

Or a ferry capsizing.

Or a supermarket burning down.

Or a bridge full of pedestrians or cars collapsing.

Or a building full of employees collapsing.

Or a factory burning down.

Or contaminated water causing mass deaths.

Or a factory or plant blowing up somewhere.

Or some mine collapsing.

Or nebulous interest dumping toxic waste by the ton along inhabited rivers, streams, farmland and even urban areas.

Cancer clusters are another phenomenon.

Hey, everybody's getting cancer, what's happening?

I don't know, could it be the secret radioactive waste dump discovered in the jungle a few years back?

Could it be the unregulated amounts of chlorine, fluorine and other chemicals dumped by the municipality in the water?

Could it just be the unsafe food and medicine you are consuming?

I can already tell this is all starting to sound terribly familiar to you.

How about that West Virginia mining accident...where the authorities just decided to GIVE UP ON THE MINERS because it was too difficult and expensive to get to them?

How Third World.

Trapped miners are simply given up on in the Third World – out of sight, out of mind (Chile actually embarrassed us by going to all that expense to take their miners out!)

A couple of years ago, a millionaire who was the first man to sail around the world in a balloon or something disappeared in the Rocky Mountains aboard his private plane.

The authorities searched for a while, then just announced the guy was probably dead and went home!

Forget what happened, forget the corpse, forget the millionaire (who might have survived), forget the whole thing!

Reminds me of a ferry accident that happened in Third World land, where they just let the corpses float downriver (they were unrecognizable anyway – the fish had gotten to them – so screw it).

Down here in Arizona, we have people searching for the Lost Dutchman's Mine.

Not long ago, three guys from Utah went hiking in the Superstition Mountains here and disappeared.

The local Sheriff's Office launched a short search, found nothing and said screw it, they're probably already dead. Nobody else searched either. Screw them.

Another Third World flashback.

The body of dude who has been run over sitting in the middle of the road like a squashed dog, with nobody giving it much heed.

Or how about those Yarnell Hotshots firefighters?

19 Firefighters burned to a crisp. Now those are Third World numbers right there.

And, of course (like in the Third World), no one is responsible.

The equipment they had, pathetic. The supervision and planning, nonexistent. Their cries for help, ignored. Compensation? The authorities are now saying they owe the widows NOTHING.

Now THAT is very Third World.

Death without compensation or explanation.

Did that doctor leave you blind or crippled on the operating table or did your husband die at the factory, or did a truck run over your kid....you don't get SQUAT.

How long before we make stuff like that our policy?

And I don't have to get into our derailed trains, our collapsing bridges and overpasses (or bridges that have been shut down because they are no longer usable).

Another Third World flashback: an entire airliner full of passengers that crashed into the mountains...was just left there by the authorities because crash site was too high.

...just like we left those West Virginia miners down there, the Utah hikers out there or that millionare pilot up there.

Flashback to America: mass contamination of our aquifers through fracking.

Right across my street is an ex-nuclear waste site the government has 'no record' of (apartments have now been build on that site)

This sits right across a 'superfund' ex-toxic waste site which now sports a high school.

This type of concealed ambient contamination happens all the time...in the Third World.

Are all those cancer clusters really a surprise, Arizona?

FILTH

If you visit any city in the Third World, the first thing you will notice is its filth.

Did you notice the filthy state of our cities lately?

No need to mention Detroit.

But a friend on a recent visit to San Francisco was in shock at all the vagrants and trash...and the predominant smell of urine that contaminated that city.

Never mind Los Angeles.

Trash seems to be a simple part of the scenery in many of our cities (just like it is in the Third World) along with the smell of urine or feces or unidentifiable chemical smells.

In my own city, those garbage cans they keep a bus stops are overflowing with trash...some sections of the city have solved that unsightly problem by simply getting rid of them.\

Filth trash and not enough funds to pick it up.

HOMELESS BEGGARS

A very depressing aspect of the Third World is the amount of homeless beggars (many of them children) who are roaming the streets.

What a coincidence that even in this regard, we are competing with the Third World atmosphere as our streets are filled with the homeless and we imitate the shanty towns of the Third World with our own ten cities of the homeless.

Anywhere you look in America now, you can't help but see homeless beggars walking the streets: single men, couples and even children.

DEBT AND BANKRUPTCY

Just like any banana republic, America has sunk itself in unpayable debt by irrepsonsible printing too much of its currency.

Bankruptcy and 'lack of funds' is chronic in the Third World (mostly because all the funds and the loans have been stolen).

How similar to the American scenario where entire cities are going bankrupt and are no longer able to function.

Nations the world over are treating the dollar like they would treat a Third World peso.

Many are refusing to accept the dollar as payment.

INFLATION

Inflation is the eternal plague of the Third World.

No matter what they try to do, they can't seem to stabilize the value of their coin.

Check out our prices lately?

How stable do they seem now?

The dollar is losing all its value while government subsidies try to keep the price of food down.

Once the dollar finally collapses (just like any Third World fiat currency) you'll sights you've never thought you'd see.

Like stock people upping the price of groceries every morning.

Or people lining up to trade their money for some other currency so that they don't lose all their savings.

The inevitable will not take long.

The government will declare a NEW currency to replace the dollar and force everybody to use it, complete with accompanying price controls.

So yeah, with my experience, I have the very unique ability to see what America is turning into.

Other Americans just see America turning into something else a seedier, uglier, dinkier something else.

Me, I have enough experience to say that America is turning into a Third World nation.

What Is Wrong With Americans?

What's wrong with the American people, more particularly, the American worker?

The American worker I saw several decades back was a dynamic go-getter and opportunist (today these are politically incorrect four letter words).

He was either working hard with the thought of getting ahead or he was looking for new ways to get ahead.

Getting ahead was what this country was all about.

Now this so-called American Worker looks like some alien life form.

I call up the local used sports equipment store and offer the kid there $150 off the record to put together a treadmill for me.

The kid at first responds enthusiastically, then flakes out.

I go to Craigslist to contract not one but two local mobile mechanics and one shop mechaninc to install a fuel-saving device in my car...all three refuse on grounds that it isn't approved or safe or this or that.

I make it a point to go to a local floor shop to have new linoleum tiles installed. The installer starts asking questions about how old my house is, and what type of linoleum I have. When it turns out the linoleum might contain asbestos, he not only runs scared and refuses to do the work, but threatens to report me to the local environmental authorities.

I call up another guy who is a solar-panel expert, but who has no license due to the outrageous licensing fees the government charges (and we call this a 'green' government?). He timidly says he will install absolutely nothing, but will stand there and tell me what to do because he is so terrified of practicing his trade without a 'license.'

I call up an electrician to install a simple electricity meter at my fusebox, so I can monitor my electricity use. He says he will not install an 'electric meter' because that is the realm of the local electric company.

Finally, I need a toilet reinstalled, so I call up a plumber who says the local shut-off valve is frozen, and that the outside key valve is without a lever and stripped. I call up another plumber and he says the same thing. The toilet is left sitting in the middle of my kitchen.

Confronted with all this frozen initiative, I had no recourse left.

I make it a point to support and contact local businesses for any jobs I need done.

But the results I got were zero.

So what did I do?

I recurred to the only dynamic, go-getting population we seem to have left – Mexicans.

Not Chicanos, mind you. The last three Chicanos I hired seemed to be pumped up on testosterone and severely lacking in skill or will to get anything done.

Mexicans.

A Mexican put together my treadmill.

A Mexican mechanic installed the fuel-saving device into my car without comment or complaint.

A group Mexicans installed my linoleum tiles quickly and efficiently. When they ran into the asbestos tiles, they had no problem – they just laid the new tiles on top of them instead of removing them.

I had a Mexican install my solar panels – a jack of all trades who seems to have done a good job.

I had an expert Mexican electrician install my own electric meter at the fuse box – yeah he charged me an expert fee, but he got the job done.

Finally, I had a white guy install my toilet.

I started going after small one or two-man operations and I scored.

But as it turns out the hard working young man who turned off the water and installed my toilet (where the other two plumbers could not) was the son of immigrants from GERMANY. So this guy was only a first generation American - brought up by Europeans.

So you see, the American worker is not what he used to be.

Instead of the dedicated, hard working man he used to be, he has turned into a bureaucrat, a complainer, a wet noodle, a flaker and a useless boot filler.

I have never heard so many American merchants retort to my complaints about a product or service with something about 'I do this for a living' and 'I have a family to support' as if that excuses their bad service.

Instead of going out there and making some money, he has become accustomed to putting his hand out and coming up with sob stories to fill his pantry.

You know who the hard working and earning people are not?

The Mexicans.

You can feel the dynamism with these people.

They are out to make a buck and have you call them back for more.

They are hard working, they have skills, they have manners and they charge reasonably (not the $200 one local plumber charged my just for showing up).

Most of the ones I met have green cards, some others might have been illegal, I don't know, but I do know one thing – they get the job done!

I have bent over backwards to support local American businesses what I have gotten in return have been hold ups, excuses and threats of being reported to the government for this or that violation combined with expensive costs.

No thanks.

I am not a cheap person, I am just a person who wants things done when someone agrees to do them.

All I have gotten from American workers lately have been excuses and threats.

The last round of contracts struck me as strange.

What the heck is wrong with us?

And then it struck me.

We are not only lazy...and greedy...and bureaucratic...but afraid.

We can no longer install toilets, linoleum, electric meters, solar panels or assemble treadmills because we are struggling with our lethargic laziness on one hand and our sheep-like fear on the other.

The American worker is becoming more and more of a liability instead of an asset.

Its the Mexicans who are working hard, earning hard and spending hard (believe me, I am not proud saying this).

I had restaurateur friend tell me the other day how upset he was with the local sheriff (Arpaio) because he was scaring his (Mexican) clientele away by persecuting illegal immigrants.

Just sitting down at a pizza place, restaurant or buffet, and what do you see?

Mexicans and large families sitting down to eat and paying for it cash.

Go to a local mall, and what do you see?

You see that a large percentage of the shoppers are Mexican...and they are spending hard too.

Anglo-Americans, it seems, are all in debt and unemployed, sitting at home watching cable or shopping at Walmart.

You can feel how discomfited I felt when the last two or three times I walked into a local gun shop, there were three or four Hispanic gun shoppers ahead of me, with more coming in.

Granted, I live in Arizona, but it is the first time I see Mexicans taking up such a large part of the local economy. These people work hard...and they spend hard.

I am not happy about it, but there it is.

The last bastion of the Anglo-American male was the gun shop.

The last time I went to a gun shop I saw ONE there...the rest were Hispanic.

Like I said, when you go to a mall, Chuck E. Cheese, Peter Piper Pizza, Best Buy, Fry's Electronics, etc, what you see are Mexican families (not Anglo-Americans) spending cash.

When you go to luxurious high-end shopping malls, what you see are the educated foreign B1B visa workers and their families babbling in foreign tounges.

When you go to Walmart, you finally get to see Americans (or whats left of us).

On the one hand, I can see why corporations and businesses are for the Dream Act - it would legitimize a whole population of motivated, hard working, hard spending individuals which would bring them even more profits.

What business would not want that?

But don't get me wrong - I am totally against the Dream Act.

I am just underlining the fact that our corporations and local businesses are seeing THEM as economic assets...NOT US.

And what's become of 'us.'

I don't know.

I don't recognize 'us' anymore.

I see more and more working age young Americans who...

-believe privacy is obsolete

-are unashamed of using and looking forward to receiving 'food stamps'

-are waiting for their parents, or the government...or somebody to bail them out

-are unashamed of renting themselves out as boy toys or girl toys to their 'mate'

-depend on their parents for economic support

-see socialism and government involvement as a good idea

-have no plan for the future except fulfilling themselves

-are unwilling to stand up for anything or anyone, including themselves

Specifically, the American worker I see as turning into a lazy bureaucrat, fearfully following the numerous laws, rules and regulations in the hope of not getting into trouble while sneakily seeing what all those laws, rules, regulations and laws can bring him or her.

The American worker (both self-employed and employee) is now a complainer, sneakily using as much legalese as possible to use his complaints as a threat.

The American worker is a gutless bureaucrat, keeping up on the latest laws, rules and regulations (and there are plenty of them) in order to not only avoid trouble, but make them work to his benefit.

The American worker is greedy, overcharges for work and expects to be paid immediately and in cash.

The American worker is a lazy clock watcher. No work on the weekends. Limited hours of work on workdays. No late calls, please. Leave for home as soon as the clock strikes five – if anything remains unfinished, that's another day's problem.

The American worker is disloyal. No loyalty to employers. No loyalty to customers. No loyalty to relatives or extended family. The only loyalty the American worker has is to himself and to the mean green.

The American worker is ignorant. No self-motivated apprenticeships, no willingness to expand on skills, knowledge or experience beyond their small field of specialization and even there, no willingness to stay up to date.

The American worker is corrupt. Jobs half done or incomplete, phony paperwork, overcharging, shoddy workmanship or products, lying, covering up, passing the blame.

The American worker lacks ambition. The majestic dreams of yesteryear – getting married, starting a family, establishing a business or career have turned into how to get by the easiest way possible while having the most free time possible and doing all the things you want to do.

To top it all off, America itself is falling behind in fields it was supposed to be a world leader:

-America is begging off Russian help in getting its astronauts to and from the International Space Station

-New American high technology weapons like the F-35 and Stealth Bomber are looking more and more like high-priced daydreams which don't really work (note the 'Stealth Fighter' that was not only seen but shot down over Yugoslavia and the cutting-edge technology drone captured by the Iranians)

-Our first rate currency, the Dollar, is being rejected around the world

-Our pro basketball team regularly loses in the Olympics

-In Videogaming, South Korean players regularly trounce American players and Russians teams regularly defeat American teams while European companies are surpassing American companies in videogame titles

-in computers, Ubuntu operating system (based on the Finnish Linux) is proving to work smoother and faster than either Macintosh (Unix) or Windos (DOS)

-Our main export to Asia is scrap paper and scrap metal (trash)

And Americans themselves are by and large a reflection of this downward trend.

Before closing, I would just like to apologize to all the (I believe 25%) American workers who are NOT like this for the above description.

You are probably what's keeping this country going.

But there you have it.

The state of the American worker today is scary.

This is the type of individual who is more likely to whine, cry and hold his hand out for a dole than hold up the Republic.

The Banks and Congress Destroyed the Economy

In 1998 Congress removed the head of the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) Brooksley Born for blowing the whistle on the trading of derivatives by banks – a type of trading that was totally illegal.

A derivative is something that is traded amongst banks as if it were something of value when it really isn't.

The word derivative comes from the fact that the value derives from something else.

When you hold a bag of mortgages, all you are holding is a bag of IOUs.

There is no guarantee you will get paid.

As such, it is like gambling.

But the banks did not care.

The banks began trading in derivatives in 1994 – in spite of it being completely illegal.

When Brooksley Born, the head of the CFTC found out and blew the whistle, the banks mobilized Congressional leadership, the Head of the Fed and the Secretary of the Treasury to destroy Brooksley Born and disempower the CFTC.

This they did with single-minded efficiency...

...and to make sure no more trouble brewed up, they installed a Goldman & Sachs employee as the new head of the CFTC.

But more needed to be done.

The cat was out of the bag.

Nothing was left to do then but MAKE THE WHOLE THING LEGAL.

So they went to Congress and DEMANDED a new law.

That Congress acquiesced to such a law is proof that Congress is no longer a representative body, but a representatives of the banks and the political lobbies.

This is why they passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (aka the Financial Services Modernization Act).

This 'act' repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibited banks from speculation and trading and generally acting like investment firms.

Glass-Steagall was important.

It was important because it was passed in reaction to the rampant banking speculation which led to the Great Depression.

Now that safety measure was once again removed.

Banks were legally on their way to being permitted to do whatever they pleased.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley not only removed all the restrictions of Glass-Steagall, but also allowed them to 'expand into other areas of service' without any government supervision as well as being allows to 'merge and expand into other types of financial institutions' and 'new lines of business.'

In other words, banks were no longer just banks, they were (once more) houses of speculation.

When the Clintonista Boom of 1994-1998 popped and the Dot.com bubble of 1999 popped, the banking institutions (along with the Fed) began to inflate the next big bubble – the Real Estate Mortgage Bubble.

They began it with a flurry of loans made possible by cheap Fed money and government-guaranteed mortgages.

Government-guaranteed.

Than means even the people you gave the mortgage to default, the government pays you the loan!

The above was made possible by twisting the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 beyond recognition (again, courtesy of Congress) into a universal loan-guarantee act.

In other words, banks could float mortgages to whomever they pleased because the government was guaranteeing all of them!

It was like a guaranteed gambling spree at Vegas.

And the banks went on a wild (guaranteed) gambling spree - giving mortgages to every Tom, Dick and Harry that showed up or relented after being asked if he wanted one.

The banks gave out mortgages like candy.

And why not?

Weren't all the mortgages guaranteed by government?

This was the real reason the government came to the rescue with the TARP bailout.

The Government did so because it was LEGALLY OBLIGATED TO DO SO by the Financial Services Modernization Act and the newly perverted Community Reinvestment Act!

The banks lost all their government-guaranteed mortgages and the government was OBLIGATED BY LAW to make good on all those losses.

The results of this have become obvious.

The Banks and Congress destroyed our economy.

No one else is to blame for our debacle.

The Banks and Congress did it.

Or better said, the Banks and the Congress which serves THEM, not us.

So thank you Congress.

Thank you Banks.

Thank you, Federal Reserve.

Here, grab by hand as we all take a long leisurely slide...

...into ECONOMIC HELL.