The Fourth of July

On this, the anniversary of the  U.S.’s independence from Great Britain, some observations:

• The government is tracking its citizens’ telephone calls, emails and, quite possibly, their ‘snail’ mail.
• Voting rights are being eroded with the complicity of the Supreme Court.
• ‘For the people’ has evolved, again with Supreme Court complicity, to ‘for the corporate good’.
• The U.S. is killing innocent men, women and children around the world with the infamous use of drones.
• Lobbyists own Congress.
• U.S. soldiers continue to be deprived of the basic civil rights they are told they are fighting to protect.
• The U.S. lies to its soldiers about their missions. Case in point: Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There were none.
• The U.S. ignores the unspeakable human rights violations of nations with the most effective lobbyists. Case in point: Israel.
• Students had been paying nearly five times the rate on student loans as banks pay on loans, and the student rate doubled as of July 1. Congress was unable to even keep the student loan rate at the original level.
• Elected officials in the House of Representatives have voted 37 times to repeal a law that has no chance of even coming up for a vote in the Senate, let alone passing. No work has been done to create jobs, repair the infrastructure, or assist the failing education system.
• The nation no longer welcomes immigrants.
• As of 2010, 15.1% of U.S. citizens live in poverty.

Let freedom ring? Not in the U.S.