I'm in Dallas on a layover from Hawaii where I was in a wedding that was not my own. When in Hawaii, it's easy to forget that you're actually in the United States. All it took was five minutes of CNN Airport News to remind me that America was in trouble.

Here are two of the things I heard that hurt my ears. And this doesn't include the five other things or more that I've heard since I started typing this.

First of all, the Plum Book came out today. It lists the 8,000 or so government jobs that will be available when the administration changes. If you're interested, they're posted on change.gov.

And if you are interested, you should consider that there are a lot of people without jobs and houses because the money that could have gone towards creating that position or paying that mortgage are going to pay your salary and health benefits. Don't take it personally, I know you will be performing an important task if you are hired, like the TSA agent who checked my boarding pass–the first and second times. You know the same boarding pass every person accused of hijacking and crashing those flights on September 11th had.

Or you could be peforming an important task like the three people from the USDA who watched my bag go through an X-Ray to make sure I wasn't carrying anything deadly back to the mainland like fresh Hawaiian fruit. Only Dole is allowed to do that.

I digress.

The second news article was about WebMD being able to spot a flu outbreak 10 days before the CDC. Hmm, a company can actually do something more efficiently than a government organization? Hard to believe. But at least the diseases they spot won't be caused by fruits from Hawaii. Tomatoes will probably take the blame, whether or not they did it.

Can someone, please, provide a good justification for why my money should be confiscated to support people who aren't competent enough to survive in the private sector and are employed for my “safety” that I never asked for? Neither did the majority of people in 75% of the states, by the way, which is what it would have taken to pass an Amendment giving the government the official power to create these agencies to begin with. Maybe if I write some variation of that 5000 or so times in the next 4-8 years, it will catch on. Like the flu. That the government won't spot until it's 10 days to late to do anything about it.

Your Fellow American,

John Armstrong

strongarmedjohn@yahoo.com

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