Lawyers

More Evidence That Lawyers Are Ruining America – You Won’t Believe What McDonald’s Is Being Sued For Now…

May 27, 2018 by Michael

One of the fastest ways to ruin anything is to get lawyers involved, and lawyers are running amok in America today. Several decades ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger warned that our nation would become “a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts”, and that is precisely what has happened. There are more than 1.3 million lawyers in the United States today, and it is estimated that those lawyers produce more than 40 million lawsuits each year. Many of those lawsuits are completely frivolous, but frivolous lawsuits are often settled because it can be much cheaper to settle them than to defend against them in court. So it is essentially a form of “legal extortion” that has gotten wildly out of control.

Earlier today I came across another shocking example of this phenomenon. McDonald’s is actually being sued for charging the same price for a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a Quarter Pounder without cheese…

Two McDonald’s customers in Florida are suing the fast-food giant for a hefty sum of $5 million because they say they’re being unfairly charged for cheese they don’t want on their burgers.

Cynthia Kissner and Leonard Werner argue that hamburgers and cheeseburgers are different prices on the McDonald’s menu, but when they order a Quarter Pounder without the extra dairy, they’re still forced to pay the same amount.

Seriously?

In the end, this is something that nobody cares about, but some lawyers out there saw an opportunity to make a quick buck and so they are going for it.

Once upon a time you could order a Quarter Pounder without cheese right off of the menu. But if you go into any McDonald’s today you have to specifically ask them to leave the cheese off if you don’t want cheese on your Quarter Pounder.

Apparently, some lawyers in Miami believe that McDonald’s is being “unjustly enriched” because the price is not reduced for those that would like the cheese left off their Quarter Pounders…

According to the lawsuit, filed by Andrew Lavin of the Miami-based Lavin Law Group, McDonald’s used to sell four items in the Quarter Pounder family, with and without cheese, with prices adjusted accordingly — about .30 to .90 cents more for cheese than without.

This practice continued for years, the suit says, but now McDonald’s, “at some point,” ceased “separately displaying these products for purchase on menus, and currently lists the availability of Quarter Pounder with Cheese and Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese.”

I can’t believe that someone should be stupid enough to bring such a lawsuit. Andrew Lavin should be immediately disbarred for this.

Attorneys like Lavin are financial predators, and fortunately it doesn’t look like McDonald’s is inclined to settle…

“We do not believe the claims in this lawsuit have legal merit,” McDonald’s said in an email. “The advertised Quarter Pounder burger comes with cheese. We try to accommodate our customers’ requests by allowing them to customize their orders, such as a Quarter Pounder with no cheese.”

It is rapidly getting to the point where our entire society is becoming paralyzed by fear of lawsuits and legal matters. Just look at the White House. President Trump could have gotten so much else done if he wasn’t constantly fighting for his life against a legal witch hunt. Robert Mueller has been given unlimited time, staff and resources to investigate the President, and it has been over a year and Mueller still hasn’t found anything.

But it looks like his absurd investigation is not going to end any time soon.

After seeing what they have done to Trump, do you think that good people will be encouraged or discouraged from running for public office?

Of course it isn’t just politicians that are being targeted for this kind of thing. You could literally spend years pouring blood, sweat and tears into building a business, and it can be destroyed in one moment by a single frivolous lawsuit.

And if you are a doctor, a lifetime of exceedingly hard work can be completely wiped out by one really greedy lawyer.

Look, every nation needs a legal system, and we do too. But today our system is in desperate need of reform. There are way too many lawyers, way too many lawsuits, and our entire society is rapidly becoming paralyzed by the misuse of legal power.

At one point I was optimistic that someday we would see some much needed reforms, but at this point I do not believe that it is going to happen…

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Gorsuch Will Not Shift The Balance Of Power On The Supreme Court As Much As You May Think

February 1, 2017February 1, 2017 by Michael

On Tuesday, President Trump announced that he would nominate Neil Gorsuch to fill the open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch currently serves on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, and he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate when he was appointed to that position by President George W. Bush in 2006. Gorsuch appears to have some strong similarities to Antonin Scalia, and many conservatives are hoping that when Gorsuch fills Scalia’s seat that it will represent a shift in the balance of power on the Supreme Court. Because for almost a year, the court has been operating with only eight justices. Four of them were nominated by Republican presidents and four of them were nominated by Democrats, and so many Republicans are anticipating that there will now be a Supreme Court majority for conservatives.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple, because a couple of the “conservative” justices are not actually very conservative at all.

For example, it is important to remember that Scalia was still on the court when the Supreme Court decision that forced all 50 states to legalize gay marriage was decided. Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the four liberal justices in a majority opinion that Scalia harshly criticized. So with Gorsuch on the court, that case would still have been decided the exact same way.

Sadly, even though Kennedy was nominated by Ronald Reagan, he has turned out to be quite liberal. In the past, not nearly enough scrutiny was given to justices that were nominated by Republican presidents, and a few of them have turned out to be total disasters.

And let us also remember that Scalia was still on the court when the big Obamacare case was decided. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberal justices in a decision that was perhaps one of the most bizarre in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

For some reason, Justice Roberts was determined to preserve Obamacare, and if you read what he wrote it is some of the most twisted legal reasoning that I have ever come across.

As someone that was once part of the legal world, let me let you in on a little secret. Most judges simply do whatever they feel like doing, and then they will try to find a way to justify their decisions. So if you ever find yourself in court, you should pray that you will get a judge that is sympathetic to your cause.

Fortunately, Gorsuch appears to be one of the rare breed of judges that actually cares what the U.S. Constitution and our laws have to say. In that respect, he is very much like Scalia…

Gorsuch is seen by analysts as a jurist similar to Scalia, who died on Feb. 13, 2016. Scalia, praised by Gorsuch as “a lion of the law,” was known not only for his hard-line conservatism but for interpreting the U.S. Constitution based on what he considered its original meaning, and laws as written by legislators. Like Scalia, Gorsuch is known for sharp writing skills.

“It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives,” Gorsuch said on Tuesday at the White House event announcing the nomination in remarks that echoed Scalia’s views.

One of the most high profile cases that Gorsuch was involved with came in 2013. That was the famous “Hobby Lobby case”, and it represented a key turning point in the fight for religious freedom. The following comes from CNN…

In 2013, he joined in an opinion by the full Court of Appeals holding that federal law prohibited the Department of Health and Human Services from requiring closely-held, for-profit secular corporations to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their employer-sponsored health insurance plans.

And although a narrowly divided 5-4 Supreme Court would endorse that view (and affirm the 10th Circuit) the following year, Gorsuch wrote that he would have gone even further, and allowed not just the corporations, but the individual owners, to challenge the mandate.

Donald Trump said that he wanted a conservative judge in the mold of Scalia, but I think that he was also looking for someone that he could get through the Senate.

And considering the fact that Gorsuch was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in 2006 will make it quite difficult for Democrats to block him now. Gorsuch has tremendous academic and professional credentials, and he will probably have a smoother road to confirmation than someone like appeals court judge William Pryor would…

Trump may have favored Gorsuch for the job in hopes of a smoother confirmation process than for other potential candidates such as appeals court judge William Pryor, who has called the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.”

But Pryor is still reportedly on the short list for the next spot on the Supreme Court that opens up, and by then the rancor in the Senate may have died down.

If Gorsuch is confirmed, what will this mean for some of the most important moral issues of our time?

As for abortion, even if Gorsuch is confirmed I do not believe that the votes are there to overturn Roe v. Wade. But if Trump is able to nominate a couple more Supreme Court justices that could change.

But even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it would not suddenly make abortion illegal. Instead, all 50 states would then be free to make their own laws regarding abortion, and a solid majority of the states would continue to keep it legal.

The analysis is similar when we look at gay marriage. If the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states was overturned, each state would get to decide whether gay marriage should be legal or not for their own citizens. And just like with abortion, it is likely that only a limited number of states would end up banning gay marriage.

So the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court appears to be a positive step, but it does not mean that we are going to see dramatic change when it comes to issues such as abortion or gay marriage any time soon.

But at least Gorsuch can help stop the relentless march of the progressive agenda through our court system. So in the end we may not make that much progress for right now, but at least the liberals won’t either.

Election Not Over? Money Is Being Raised To Challenge The Election Results In Wisconsin, Michigan And Pennsylvania

November 23, 2016November 23, 2016 by Michael

Just when you thought it was safe to celebrate Trump’s victory, the left is hatching a plan to try to steal the election right from under his nose. A group composed of “prominent computer scientists” and “election lawyers” is urgently asking the Clinton campaign to challenge the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They claim that there is “persuasive evidence” that the election results in those states were “manipulated or hacked”, and they are pushing Clinton to file formal challenges to those results while there is still time to do so. As I write this article, the final result in Michigan could still go either way, and if Hillary Clinton does end up winning Michigan all she would have to do would be to flip the results in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to become the next president of the United States.

Many on the left are absolutely incensed that Donald Trump is going to be the next president even though it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to win the popular vote by a very wide margin. In fact, as I write this article Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has expanded to more than 1.8 million votes.

After all of the votes have been counted, it is entirely possible that Hillary Clinton may finish more than 2 million votes ahead of Donald Trump.

In a desperate bid to try to salvage the election, an attempt is being made to push for recounts in the key swing states that Clinton lost. This is being talked about all over the mainstream media today, but it was first reported by New York Magazine…

Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.

Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000.

The race in Michigan is even closer, and the truth is that Clinton may be able to close the gap of about 11,000 votes there without a recount.

In Pennsylvania, the gap is currently about 68,000 votes, and so that would present much more of a challenge for the Clinton campaign.

At this point it is questionable whether Hillary Clinton is willing to formally request recounts in those states before the deadlines arrive, but she doesn’t have to be the one to do it.

In fact, according to MSN another presidential candidate is already raising the money needed to submit her own requests for recounts in those key battleground states…

Jill Stein, the Green party’s presidential candidate, is prepared to request recounts of the election result in several key battleground states, her campaign said on Wednesday.

Stein launched an online fundraising page seeking donations toward a $2m fund she said was needed to request reviews of the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Stein said she was acting due to “compelling evidence of voting anomalies” and that data analysis had indicated “significant discrepancies in vote totals”.

But if Stein wants to do something, she needs to act very quickly.

The deadline to officially file for a recount in Wisconsin is Friday, in Pennsylvania it is Monday, and in Michigan it is next Wednesday.

Meanwhile, six former Bernie Sanders supporters are engaged in a last ditch effort to use the Electoral College to deny Trump the presidency on December 19th. Just like the attempt to recount the votes in key battleground states, this plan is not likely to work either, but right now it is receiving a lot of attention from the mainstream media. The following comes from a Daily Caller article entitled “Sanders Electors Vow To Vote Against Clinton In Wild Attempt To Keep Trump From White House“…

The group asserts that in order to succeed in their goal, they would have to convince 37 Republican electors to vote against Trump, a number the groups understands is unlikely. The ultimate goal, the group says, is to reduce the overall faith the average american voter has in the electoral college system.

Until the actual votes are tallied, it will be very difficult for either Democrats or Republicans to ascertain just how effective the movement is, because there is no organized whip effort to gauge how many electors intend to vote they way they are instructed.

There is no remedy for a faithless elector.

It is extremely unlikely that 37 Republican electors would betray Trump at this point.

What is far more likely is that these former Bernie Sanders supporters will bring enough attention to “faithless electors” that it will cause an even bigger push to abolish the Electoral College.

But because it would require changing the Constitution in order to abolish the Electoral College, it is something that is not likely to happen any time soon.

Ultimately, all of these last minute moves by the left seem destined to fail, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that they can do at this point to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

And the truth is that so many of the things that I warn are coming to America in my new book are far more likely to happen if Trump is in the White House rather than if a Democrat is residing there.

We have reached a critical moment in U.S. history, and right now optimism about the future of this country among conservatives is off the charts.

But is that optimism justified?

We shall see, but without a doubt this optimism is not shared by Democrats, and many on the left are preparing to fight against Trump every step of the way.

America Has Become A Lawless Nation – Hillary Clinton Magically Cleared By The FBI

July 5, 2016July 5, 2016 by Michael

It is hard to be proud to be an American today after watching FBI director James Comey magically clear Hillary Clinton of all wrongdoing. Sadly, Comey is likely to go down in history as the man that struck the final death blow to the rule of law in America. During his address to the media, Comey admitted that Clinton sent or received 110 emails in 52 email chains that contained classified material at the time they were sent. But of course there were probably many more. Comey told the press that it was “likely that there are other work-related emails that they did not produce … that are now gone because they deleted all emails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices.” So basically Clinton turned over to the FBI whatever she felt like turning over, and then she destroyed the rest of the evidence. As a former lawyer, this infuriates me, but it doesn’t surprise me.

In fact, it doesn’t surprise me at all that Hillary Clinton was allowed to skate. I expected this all along. If you search the thousands of articles that I have posted on The Economic Collapse Blog and End Of The American Dream, you will find many articles where I say that Hillary Clinton should be in prison, but not a single one where I ever said that I thought she would be going to prison.

This is how politics in America works today. People like Bill and Hillary Clinton could openly sacrifice children to Satan on the White House lawn and still probably not get into trouble. Despite scandal after scandal going all the way back to Arkansas in the 1980s, nothing ever sticks to them, and nothing probably ever will.

In this case, FBI director James Comey essentially had to rewrite federal law in order to clear Clinton. This is something that Andrew McCarthy explained very well in his article entitled “FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook”…

There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.

—–

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.

The amazing thing is that the FBI handled a highly similar case very, very differently less than a year ago. Just check out what happened to Naval reservist Bryan Nishimura…

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kendall J. Newman immediately sentenced Nishimura to two years of probation, a $7,500 fine, and forfeiture of personal media containing classified materials. Nishimura was further ordered to surrender any currently held security clearance and to never again seek such a clearance.

According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers. Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. He carried such classified materials on his unauthorized media when he traveled off-base in Afghanistan and, ultimately, carried those materials back to the United States at the end of his deployment. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system.

Nishimura’s actions came to light in early 2012, when he admitted to Naval personnel that he had handled classified materials inappropriately. Nishimura later admitted that, following his statement to Naval personnel, he destroyed a large quantity of classified materials he had maintained in his home. Despite that, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Nishimura’s home in May 2012, agents recovered numerous classified materials in digital and hard copy forms. The investigation did not reveal evidence that Nishimura intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel.

So what is the difference between Nishimura and Clinton?

Neither of them ever intended to do anything wrong.

So why were they treated so differently?

Needless to say, social media is exploding with outrage over this decision to let Clinton go free. Many Americans are openly asking why they should continue to play by the rules if politicians like Hillary Clinton are not required to do so.

Unfortunately, this is what America has become. Our politicians are a reflection of who we are as a society, and as I have stated before Hillary Clinton is going to be the overwhelming favorite if there is an election in November. At this moment, she has solid leads in all of the “swing states”, and she only really needs to win one of them…

Perhaps you enjoy talk of battleground states. Well, there’s a scenario for you, too. First, pick the six “closest” swing states (VA, NH, IA, OH, FL, NC). Got it? Now understand that New Hampshire excepted, Clinton only has to win one of them in order to reach the requisite 270 electoral votes to win. (Optional third step for Republicans only: start shotgunning Pabst Blue Ribbon and don’t stop until November.)

Lest any Trump supporters seek solace in poll numbers, recent polls have Trump sliding further behind in all the relevant swing states. According to a Ballotpedia battleground poll released last week, Trump trails by 14% in Florida, 4% in Iowa, 10% in North Carolina, 9% in Ohio, and 7% in Virginia.

Hillary Clinton is a horrible, evil, miserable human being, and right now she is the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the United States.

But ultimately it is the American people that are to blame for blindly supporting corrupt politicians such as Clinton, and if they willingly pick her to be our next president then we will certainly deserve whatever consequences follow.

Why Does Maryland Have The Most Millionaires Per Capita? The Answer Might Make You Angry

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 by Michael

The fat cats in Washington D.C. are living the high life, and they are doing it at your expense. Over the past decade, there has been one area of the country which has experienced a massive economic boom. Thanks to wildly out of control government spending, the Washington D.C. region is absolutely swimming in cash. In fact, at this point the state of Maryland has the most millionaires per capita in the entire nation and it isn’t even close. If you have never lived there, it is hard to describe what the D.C. area is like. Every weekday morning, hordes of lawyers, lobbyists and government bureaucrats descend upon D.C. from the surrounding suburbs. And at the end of the day, the process goes in reverse. Everyone is just trying to get their piece of the pie, and it is a pie that just keeps on growing as government salaries, government contracts and government giveaways just get larger and larger. Of course our founders never intended for this to happen. They wanted a very small and simple federal government. Sadly, today we have the most bloated central government in the history of the planet and it gets worse with each passing year.

If you were to ask most Americans, they would tell you that the wealthiest Americans probably live in cities such as New York or San Francisco. But thanks to the Obama administration (and before that the Bush and Clinton administrations), the state of Maryland is packed with millionaires. In particular, the Maryland suburbs immediately surrounding D.C. are absolutely overflowing with government fat cats that make a living at our expense. Every weekday morning, huge numbers of them leave their mini-mansions in places such as Potomac and Rockville and drive their luxury vehicles to work in the city. As the Washington Post has detailed, at this point approximately 8 percent of all households in the entire state of Maryland contain millionaires, and the rest of the area is not doing too shabby either…

In Maryland, nearly 8 out of every 100 households in 2014 had assets topping $1 million, giving the state more millionaires per capita than any other in the country, according to a new report from Phoenix Marketing International.

The rest of the Beltway isn’t lacking in millionaires either: The District and Virginia ranked in the top 10 among those with the highest number of millionaire households per capita in 2014. In Virginia, which was No. 6 on the list, 6.76 percent of the state’s 3.17 million households are millionaires. And in the District, which rounds out the top 10, 6.25 percent of its more than 292,000 households are millionaires.

And while not too many of them are millionaires, your average federal workers that toil in D.C. are doing quite well too.

Once upon a time, it was considered to be a “sacrifice” to go into “government service”.

Not anymore.

If you can believe it, approximately 17,000 federal employees made more than $200,000 last year.

Overall, compensation for federal employees comes to a grand total of close to half a trillion dollars every 12 months.

In fact, there are tens of thousands of federal employees that make more than the governors of their own states do.

Does that seem right to you?

If you want to live “the American Dream” these days, the Washington area is the place to go. Just check out the following description of the region from the Washington Post…

Washingtonians now enjoy the highest median household income of any metropolitan area in the country, and five of the top 10 jurisdictions in America — Loudoun, Howard and Fairfax counties, and Falls Church and Fairfax City — are here, census data shows.

The signs of that wealth are on display all over, from the string of luxury boutiques such as Gucci and Tory Burch opening at Tysons Galleria to the $15 cocktails served over artisanal ice at the W Hotel in the District to the ever-larger houses rising off River Road in Potomac.

And of course let us not forget the fat cats in Congress.

According to CNN, our Congress critters are now wealthier than every before…

The typical American family is still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, but Congress is getting wealthier every year.

The median net worth of lawmakers was just over $1 million in 2013, or 18 times the wealth of the typical American household, according to new research released Monday by the Center for Responsive Politics.

And while Americans’ median wealth is down 43% since 2007, Congress members’ net worth has jumped 28%.

Not only that, there are nearly 200 members of Congress that are actually multimillionaires…

Nearly 200 are multimillionaires. One hundred are worth more than $5 million; the top-10 deal in nine digits. The annual congressional salary alone—$174,000 a year—qualifies every member as the top 6 percent of earners. None of them are close to experiencing the poverty-reduction programs—affordable housing, food assistance, Medicaid—that they help control. Though some came from poverty, a recent analysis by Nicholas Carnes, in his book White Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policymaking, found that only 13 out of 783 members of Congress from 1999 to 2008 came from a “blue-collar” upbringing.

Incredible.

But even though almost all of them are quite wealthy, they don’t hesitate to spend massive amounts of taxpayer money on their own personal needs.

For example, according to the Weekly Standard, more than five million dollars was spent on the hair care needs of U.S. Senators alone over one recent 15 year period…

Senate Hair Care Services has cost taxpayers about $5.25 million over 15 years. They foot the bill of more than $40,000 for the shoeshine attendant last fiscal year. Six barbers took in more than $40,000 each, including nearly $80,000 for the head barber.

And in one recent year, an average of $4,005,900 was spent on “personal” and “office” expenses per U.S. Senator.

So the grand total would have been over 400 million dollars for a single year.

That seems excessive, doesn’t it?

And even when they end up leaving Washington, our Congress critters have ensured that they will continue to collect money from U.S. taxpayers for the rest of their lives…

In 2011, 280 former lawmakers who retired under a former government pension system received average annual pensions of $70,620, according to a Congressional Research Service report. They averaged around 20 years of service. At the same time, another 215 retirees (elected in 1984 or later with an average of 15 years of service) received average annual checks of roughly $40,000 a year.

If you can believe it, there are quite a few former lawmakers that are collecting federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually. The list includes Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.

Of course the biggest windfalls of all are for our ex-presidents. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that the U.S. government is spending approximately 3.6 million dollars a year to support the lavish lifestyles of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

So does this make you angry?

Or are you okay with these fat cats living the high life at our expense?

Please feel free to add to the discussion by posting a comment below…

Can America Survive If Americans No Longer Agree On A Core Set Of Shared Values?

January 10, 2013January 9, 2013 by Michael

What does America stand for? That question is a lot more complicated than you might think. Our Founding Fathers established a Republic that was based on a set of shared values that were embodied in the text of the U.S. Constitution. But today, many of our politicians openly disregard the Constitution whenever they want and it has become fashionable to mock the U.S. Constitution. For example, the New York Times recently published a piece by Georgetown University Professor Louis Michael Seidman entitled “Let’s Give Up On The Constitution” in which he publicly called the Constitution “archaic” and “downright evil”. This is a man that has been teaching constitutional law to the next generation of lawyers at one of the top universities in the nation for nearly 40 years. Unfortunately, Seidman is not an aberration. The truth is that law schools all over America are absolutely packed with professors that teach that we should consider the U.S. Constitution a “living, breathing document” that must “evolve” as society evolves. They also teach that when we find something in the Constitution that does not work for us today that we should just ignore it. In fact, in his New York Times article Seidman insisted that “constitutional disobedience” is “as old as the Republic”. But if we can just ignore the U.S. Constitution whenever we want, where does that leave us? Should we be able to ignore all laws when they are not convenient for us?

Personally, I strongly believe that we should follow the U.S. Constitution, and there are millions of others out there that agree with me. If we want to amend the Constitution, there is a procedure for doing that, but it is not easy. Our founders did that to try to ensure that any changes to our Constitution would reflect an overwhelming consensus of the American people.

But today America is more divided than ever before. We can’t seem to agree on much of anything. We are at a period in our history when we desperately need to come together, but instead we are constantly at each other’s throats.

Is there anything that truly unites us anymore?

In the old days, if you would have asked people to give you a one word definition of America, many people would have responded by naming important values such as “freedom” and “liberty”.

Sadly, much of the country appears not to even value those things any longer. One poll found that 51 percent of all Americans believe that “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.” Other surveys have found similar results.

Not only that, we continue to elect control freak politicians from both political parties that appear to be obsessed with constantly eroding our freedoms and liberties. There are literally millions of ridiculous laws, rules and regulations that govern even the smallest details of our lives, and the government is constantly inventing new ways to watch, track, register, monitor and control all of us. If you doubt this, please see this article and this article. If we continue down this path, we are going to end up in a very dark place as a nation.

Well, what about economics?

Aren’t we united by a common economic philosophy?

Sadly, no we are not.

In the old days, Americans overwhelmingly believed in free market capitalism and overwhelmingly rejected socialism, but now that is rapidly changing.

According to a stunning Pew Research Center survey, 49 percent of Americans in the 18 to 29 age bracket have a positive view of socialism while only 46 percent of Americans in that same age bracket have a positive view of capitalism.

So what will the future look like if we continue to see this kind of shift among our young people?

And of course we have not had anything even close to a true free market system in the United States in a very, very long time. Our economy is dominated by a partnership between the federal government and the monolithic predator corporations that dominate our society. Individuals and small businesses that try to compete are being absolutely suffocated. Our Founding Fathers were very suspicious of all large concentrations of power, and they sought to greatly limit the power of both the federal government and of the big corporations. But today we have gone totally in the other direction.

Well, is there anything else that truly unites America?

What about religion?

Of course it is true that the overwhelming majority of the early colonists were Christian, and even 50 years ago it would have been accurate to say that America was a “Christian nation”, but that is definitely no longer the case today.

The number of Americans with no religious affiliation has absolutely exploded in recent years. It has grown by a whopping 25 percent over the past five years, and meanwhile the percentage of people that identify themselves as “Christians” in America is dropping like a rock. In fact, one poll found that the percentage of Protestants in the United States has dropped below 50 percent for the first time ever. For many more shocking numbers that show the precipitous decline of Christianity in America, please see this article.

So what fundamental principles do most Americans actually agree on?

And I am not talking about things like “American Idol is going downhill” or “Justin Bieber gets too much attention”.

Is there still a core set of shared values that the entire nation can agree upon?

If not, where does that leave us?

Unfortunately, I think that it leaves us in a very difficult place. The divisiveness that we have seen in Washington D.C. in recent years is just the tip of the iceberg. We are living in a nation today that is more divided than I can ever remember. A whole host of opinion polls have shown that anger and frustration in America are rising to very dangerous levels, and instead of focusing on the real reasons for our problems we all tend to point the fingers at one another.

In America today, we have been trained to group ourselves together by certain “categories” and to see those on the other side as “the enemy”. This is a very dangerous thing. It keeps the American people from coming together to fix the very serious problems that are facing our country.

The truth is that we are being divided in dozens of different ways today. The following are just a few of the ways we are currently being divided…

Republican vs. Democrat

Conservative vs. Liberal

Rich vs. Poor

Black vs. White (or insert any other two races or ethnic groups)

North vs. South

Urban vs. Rural

Anti-Gun vs. Pro-Gun

Male vs. Female

Young vs. Old

Traditional vs. “Modern”

Religious vs. Secular

Of course we should never compromise what we believe just for the sake of “unity”. That is foolishness. But you can disagree with someone without hating them.

In America today, people will find a reason to hate someone else at the drop of a hat. Surprisingly large numbers of Americans will hate others because of where they are from, what they look like, what their ethnic background is, what their political affiliation is or what their religious beliefs are.

If America is going to have any kind of a future, we have got to start loving one another. That does not mean that we all have to agree with one another. But we do need to start caring about one another and hoping for the best for one another.

For example, I fundamentally disagree with almost every single thing that Barack Obama does. But I do not hate him. On the contrary, I pray for him and his family. I would love to see him experience a 180 degree turnaround and start fighting for the truth. I believe that love is stronger than hate, and I believe that there is hope for every one of us.

I know that I have had my mind changed on a lot of things throughout my life, and if I could go back there are many things I would do differently. I am thankful for those that loved me and had patience with me when I was younger.

And that is the kind of grace that we should extend toward others. Yes, a stand needs to be made when others are promoting evil and trampling on our rights. But instead of responding to hate with even greater amounts of hate, perhaps it would be better if we responded with even greater amounts of love.

And I am not saying that we always have to be “meek” in our approach. For example, if I was pushing a shopping cart around the local supermarket and I came upon a young child that was about to guzzle an entire bottle of liquid bleach, I would yell and scream at that child to stop. Sometimes yelling and screaming is the loving thing to do. There is nothing wrong with “tough love”.

There are preachers and radio hosts that I know that express what they believe in a very vociferous manner, but it is coming from a good place. They love their listeners and they love their country and they are just trying to wake people up. There is nothing wrong with that.

On the flip side, there are others that truly do hate particular categories of people. For example, I was on a radio show earlier today, and the first half of the interview went great as I explained the problems with our economy, how our cities are degenerating and how the Federal Reserve is at the very heart of our financial problems as a nation.

But then in the second half of the interview, the radio host started blaming one particular ethnic group for all of our problems. I had not properly researched this particular host and I was horrified. I told her in a very clear manner that I thought that she was wrong. I don’t think that she appreciated that very much.

But the truth is that we are never going to fix the very serious problems that are facing this country if we choose to hate one another because of what we look like or who our ancestors were. We are never going to fix the very serious problems that are facing this country if we choose to remain trapped in the “red vs. blue” paradigm and keep pointing fingers of hatred at one another. We are never going to fix the very serious problems that are facing this country if we would rather indulge in hatred rather than love.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t fight for what is right. There are most certainly politicians that need to be voted out of office. There are most certainly big corporations that need to be exposed. There are most definitely evil agendas that are being promoted at the highest levels. Our society is clearly headed in the wrong direction and this country needs a massive wake up call.

But I think that we will get a lot farther if love is our primary motivation. Without love, we are nothing. Let us start to love one another as we would like to be loved ourselves.

So what do all of you think about this? I am sure that there are probably some very strong opinions out there. Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…