A tree fell in Paradise
photograph by Gary D. Brune copyright 2007
It sometimes is hard to deal with being right. The photograph above I took on November 20 of last year at the K-Mart store in Paradise because I reasoned that the Sears Holding Company by investing in the signs on the stucco wall doomed the trees in front of them. After Christmas, eight trees were felled in front of this K-Mart.
It shows the attitude of our capitalistic society. Nothing shall stand in the way of business making as many dollars as possible.
I just watched the rebroadcast of the New Hampshire debate between the Republican and Democratic campaigns for President, and here, with 302 days to the November election, this will end up being the most over-analyzed campaign in history. I'll have to wade through 302 days and three votes here in California, and what will prevent me from being burned out on this campaign and election.
During the Republican segment, a significant bit of time was spent on both health care, with the candidates branding government health care such as Medicare as socialist, and immigration, again with the candidates saying that we are a country that is run by the rule of law and that all immigrants should wait in line at the border for their opportunity to come into this country.
What I understand from our present immigration laws is that the applicant has to have something to directly contribute here or at least have a sponsor with enough resources to prevent the applicant from being a drain on our society. In other words, we must be able to exploit the prospective immigrant.
If the 12 million undocumented immigrants that the Republicans acknowledge were rich, we would have no problem with them being here, at least as long as they have money. Since it is generally acknowledged though that these people are poor, we don't want them. What nobody wants to say here is that we would rather have the poor immigrants die in their country of origin than live here.
The health care debate has the same tenor in that the Republican candidates want individuals to be able to pay for their own insurance, or have some sort of medical savings account in place. If the person is not well-to-do enough to foot the bill for their medical care, the government should not have something in place to help them.
The tree in the picture above, undocumented immigrants, and poor people all have the same problem. They are a drain on the free and unfettered ability of our capitalistic society to make as much money as it can.