by James Glaser
March 10, 2004

What the people in Washington are doing to us isn't a joke, its serious business. Washington is playing sick games with the American people. Let's just take Inflation as an example.

Inflation (from the dictionary) an unstable rise in price levels due to an increase in currency and a mounting demand for goods.

Hey, I am not an economist and chances are pretty good that you aren't either and that makes the people in Washington that are running this country very happy. But let's talk about inflation.

Washington wants us to believe their isn't any and they do this by controlling what prices are tracked. I have no idea of what they are buying to see if things cost more, but everything I buy seems to be going up.

I would think that the price of gas should be used and how about car repairs. Do you know that it can cost over 500 dollars to get a heater core changed in some new cars? How about tires? I just paid over four hundred for four tires.

It really makes sense to me to use home heating fuel for looking at inflation and let me tell you that the LP gas I use for heating my home is up about 40% over last summer.

Don't even try and buy plywood as the price is way out of line. That is where demand comes in to play. The fake plywood they make with wood chips and glue, well that stuff has more than doubled in the last year.

Eggs, that Atkins diet has made them worth about fifty cents a dozen more and it seems that everything in the store is up. Go buy a good steak, I bet you are at over eight bucks and that is only 12 ounces.

Cigarettes kill you and so you would think they would almost have to give them away, but no, they are making a killing on them because people that are addicted can't quit and they know it.

Prescription drugs, Charmaine got out of the hospital and that first fill came to over eight hundred dollars.

Washington is scamming us. They want us to believe that just because everything made in China is so cheap, everything is just great. Try buying a pair of those $11.99 jeans and then wash them a few times. You get what you pay for and if you want quality you have to pay for it and the cost of quality keeps going up

Here is another example of how easy we are. Today Colin Powell was on MPR and was telling Juan Williams that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs. This is the guy that went to the UN representing our country and said that it was a fact that Iraq had these weapons and he even gave the amount in liters and tons. Now we let him get away with changing the story into "Weapon Programs." It is the same thing they do with inflation. Make the numbers or the words say what they want them to and the American people go, OK.

Today I read a report in the Minneapolis Tribune about how the CEOs of this nation are dumping their stocks in the companies they run at a rate about a hundred times more than CEOs that are buying. It was a little story buried in the business section. That tells me a lot and it should have been on the front page so the poor working stiff could think about his retirement account.

Remember how good you felt when George Bush talked about all the billions of dollars America was going to give to African countries to fight aids? Try and find out one country that got any help and how much they really got.

Jobs! George Bush keeps telling us that they are right around the corner, but last month there were only 21,000 and it is reported we need something like 120.000 each month just to keep up with the population growth. Come to find out those 21,000 were all government jobs and the only reason the unemployment number stayed the same is that three hundred and some thousand people quit looking for work.

Just like inflation and the number game Washington plays with us there, the unemployment number is "fixed." People that no longer receive a weekly check because their benefits run out are no longer counted. So what can happen is that less people are working, but the unemployment number stays the same or can even go lower so people think things are picking up. That is the reason the Republicans will not extend benefits for people going off the rolls. That would make the unemployment number go up, so screw those people.

Yes, we are easy. We let Washington get away with this. Both the Republicans and the Democrats know that they are lying, scamming, and screwing us. To them it is a game to stay in power and they will do any underhanded thing they can think of and smile while doing it.

Time to wake up people.