THE DIRE STATE OF OUR NATION

THE DIRE STATE OF OUR NATION  (What You Won’t Hear from the Politicians).

Posted on January 21, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog .

By John Whitehead, constitutional and human rights attorney.

FACTS on THE LAND OF THE FREE:  

1-The national debt is somewhere in the vicinity of $18 trillion. [DEBT make as dependent, weak]

2- More than a third of our debt is owned by foreign countries, namely China and Japan.

3- Our education system is abysmal. Despite the fact that we spend more than most of the world on education ($115,000 per student), we rank 36^th in the world when it comes to math, reading and science.

4- Our homes provide little protection against government intrusions. Now have radars that allow them to “see” through the walls of your home.

5- Our prisons, housing the largest number of inmates in the world and still growing, have become money-making enterprises for private corporations that rely on the inmates for cheap labor.

 6- We are no longer a representative republic. The U.S. has become a corporate oligarchy. As a recent survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen.

7- We’ve got the most expensive, least effective health care system in the world.

8- The air pollution levels are dangerously high for almost half of the U.S. population, putting Americans at greater risk of premature death, aggravated asthma, difficulty breathing and future cardiovascular problems.

9- nation’s “infrastructure,” there are more than 63,000 bridges—one out of every 10 bridges in the country—in urgent need of repair. Some of these bridges are used 250 million times a day by trucks, school buses, passenger cars and other vehicles.

10- Americans know little to nothing about their rights or how the government is supposed to operate. 27 percent of elected officials cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, while 54 percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.

11- Nearly one out of every three American children live in poverty, ranking us among the worst in the developed world.

12- Patrolled by police, our schools have become little more than quasi-prisons in which kids as young as age 4 are being handcuffed for “acting up,” subjected to body searches and lockdowns, and suspended for childish behavior.

13- We’re no longer innocent until proven guilty. In our present surveillance state, that burden of proof has now been shifted so that we are all suspects to be spied on, searched, scanned, frisked, monitored, tracked and treated as if we’re potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

14- Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family.

15- Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA.  

16- Americans LIFE have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. 

17-  American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

18- Police forces across the country continue to be transformed into extensions of the military, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield. As I pointed out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State

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