Money

The NFL Draft is in full swing, and we now know that there will probably be a full season now that the lockout is over. For some reason though, everyone wanted to place the blame on the players. However, the owners wanted to pay the players less, while increasing their own cut of the profit. Let's think about something: one group puts their lives on the line in almost any weather, while the other sits up in a climate-controlled booth while this happens. Who deserves more money? People need to think about it in terms of their own job. If their boss tried to pull that over on them, there's no way they would stand for it!
Another company that makes way too much money is Occidental Petroleum. This past year, their profits increased 46%, to $1.55 billion, a company record. The reason? Increases prices. Gas prices are insanely high because of the turmoil in the Middle East. That should mean that their costs and prices should increase fairly similarly and profit should remain fairly steady. There obviously is some disconnect there.
But that is our country: we are moving into the hands of big business. Yet somehow both parties still claim to be out for the common citizen. One party supports unionizing to maintain workers' rights, while the other wants to ban unions in government workplaces. If we all were really out for the common citizen, we wouldn't be trying to get rid of unions. And we definitely wouldn't be allowing big businesses to exploit loopholes in tax laws so they pay less taxes than individual people do. Our government gives more money in tax returns than it receives in taxes. But yet, some people want to still lower taxes. Lowering taxes decreases the amount of money that our government has. Yet people wonder why we are so far in debt as a nation. Maybe instead of lowering taxes, we should lower our spending. And instead of cutting something as small as Planned Parenthood, maybe we should start cutting back on our defense budget. The largest air force in the world is the United States Air Force. The second largest air force is a part of the U.S. Navy. It seems like we have room to cut.
As if all this wasn't bad enough, now big business is attempting to get into the White House. Donald Trump has a realistic shot of being the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. Why does he deserve a realistic chance? He has no past experience in politics. Look at California and what happened when a celebrity decided to run for office. He's banking on being a recognizable name, and having business success. People are going to vote for him because they think of all of his successful businesses, but what about his unsuccessful businesses? He had multiple businesses go bankrupt. How does a casino go bankrupt?! How is he supposed to handle running an entire country? Looks like it's time for me to get my dual citizenship just to be safe!