Take a good look at your telephone bill. It doesn’t matter what city you are in or who your provider is, you will see words like “charges,” “surcharges,” “fees,” “subscriber costs,” “interstate rates,” and a whole lot more.
No matter what they are called, they are taxes.
Now that our government has stuck its nose into our computers we can look forward to many more fees, charges, and, of course, taxes. Anytime the governments of your city, state and nation can, they will place a hand in your pocket and take what they can.
One of the talking heads on the tube denied all those taxes will come to the Internet along with Net Neutrality. She said that any expenses involved here will be paid by the companies running the show. Who is she kidding? Anytime a company doing business with the public has to cough up some extra cash, it just passes those expenses along to its customers — you and me.
Anybody here disagree?
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Obama: “Here in America, Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding.”
Historian David Barton, looking for Islamic contributions to the founding of the Thirteen Colonies, stated, “In all the reading I’ve done, thousands of books, there’s nothing there relating to Islamic contributions in early America. We do know that Muslims were the folks who captured the slaves sent to America, largely out of Africa.”
If my president’s comments are about what contributions were woven to the fabric of humanity in America then once again, he is wrong. However, if he intends to count slavery among those contributions that were a section of the building of this nation, he is correct. What do you think was running through his medulla as he offered his remarks to the world?
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I have noticed that since society started this war on smokers, fewer restaurants give away books of matches. Hey, come on guys. I don’t smoke but I need matches eight times a year to light the candles on my grandchildren’s birthday cakes. Yes! I have eight grandkids and I love them all. One reader, and I know who you are, will write and call me a cheapskate for not buying matches. I don’t know about where you reside but in my neighborhood there are two major supermarkets and neither of them sell books of matches.
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Many years ago, when Lou Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul- Jabbar, and Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, nobody gave it much thought. Now, when the twenty-something-year-old kid up the block legally changes his name to Suspicious X, I think it’s time for the feds to look at his computer, eavesdrop on his telephone calls, and ask a few questions. Why did you change your name? Do you have a passport? Where is your passport? I realize that this may be an infringement of his rights, with the American Civil Liberties Union stepping in on his behalf, but for the sake of the safety of the community, city and the nation, I offer a Bronx cheer to the ACLU. I would rather listen to your arguments and flip you the bird than bury a few Americans.
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Near the middle of the last century, when I attended PS 184 in Brownsville, we learned reading and writing and arithmetic. In some places in America, that reading part is now known as English Language Arts. I am StanG
