Pete's BLOG - Day #26,037 in my journey through life.

Today is April 5, 2012 - it is a chilly 50 degree day - we're getting March weather now in the month of April.
This morning I did my yoga, the exercise ball and walked for 54 minutes = 3.0 miles for an April total of 10.5 miles. My weight continues at 165.8 pounds.

A new addition to my BLOG will be a HIV notice on a daily basis. Don't get excited as HIV neans "I'm HEALTHY and I'M VERTICAl." I'm not on the horizontal yet and hopefully won't be for quite some time.

MY THOUGHTS TODAY.

On the way home from San Francisco I picked up a USA TODAY newspaper and came across an article entitled INCOME INEQUALITY does MATTER. Below is a summary of what the author (Philip Meyer) had to say.

So my thoughts today deal with the "income inequality" in the U.S. as explained by Philip Meyer. The shift to income inequality in the U.S. began when the Reagan administration started a systematic tranfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the privileged few at the top - and little has changed since that time. The Central Intelligence Agency posts estimates of income inequality for 140 nations in its WORLD FACTBOOK. Some examples of severe inequality are South Africa in third place and Brazil in 13th place. The U.S. ranks 42nd. Some nations with the least income inequality are Canada at 96th, Austria at 133rd and Sweden is the least unequal at 140th. In the U.S. the latest figures show that the top 20% of Americans own 85% of the wealth in the U.S. while the bottom 40% of Americans own 0.3% of the wealth in the U.S.

What's wrong with this picture? I predict that as this trend continues and more and more Americans finally realize what has happened we could have big troubles in this country. It could create instability as the stability of any democracy depends on its legitimacy, a general sense that the system is FAIR. And that is what is at risk today.

The remainder of these words are mine. I do not like what has happened in the U.S. since 1981 when the Reagan administration took over and conservative policies were implemented. We are seeng the results with income inequality. And we are seeing the results of conservatives being appointed to the Supreme Court. Read below:

And one more thing happening in the U.S. with the income inequality we now have is the dependence of presidential and congressioal campaigns on a handful of billionaires. We can thank the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in 2010 for this. Again it comes down to money, greed and the desire for power by our corporations. It looks like we are going back to the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The corporations controlled everything at that time and there were no unions, no middle class, no health care, no safety provisions for workers, no workman's comp, no unemploymant insurance, no minimum wage, no overtime pay, no paid vacations, 50-70 hour work weeks, no Social Security, no Medicare, etc. I sometimes think this is where the Koch Brothers and the other conservative billionaires want this country to go. As the years go by I predict more protests from the 99% like we saw this past year in New York and all over the U.S.