Budget

Government Spent Took in Fiscal year 2017 $3,980 billion $2,740 billion Fiscal year 2018 $4,441 billion $2,760 billion The deficit is caused by spending too much not by not collecting enough. If you are wondering why the deficit for 2018 shows $1,681 billion but the government reported $779 billion deficit it is because of the way the government has been reporting things since 1990. Everyone assumes that the national debt is an accumulation of the annual deficit is mistaken. This is because some items like social security are considered off budget and not counted in the annual deficit but still counted in the overall debt.

Hire American

Trump industries employs 23,000 people and 80% of the 1,000 people who work at Mar a Lago are Latios. The earn between $12 and $14 per hour. Senator Sanders said that Trump talks about hiring Americans but only one American was hired last year at Mar a Lago when thousands applied. Sanders later added that Trump repeatedly tells Americans "how much he hates immigrants and how much he loves American workers" while saying that “last year, Trump chose to hire only one American worker even though thousands of Americans wanted to work at his Mar-a-Lago resort."

Poor people

Sometimes when I look around the country, I am surprised at how the lives of poor people have improved during my life time. My wife was born on a farm in North Dakota during the depression in a family of 16 children. They had no running water, no indoor plumbing and no electricity. They wore hand me down clothes that their mother made and for birthdays they had a cake which they shared. Imagine hanging on to the rope line to make it safely to the out house so you would get lost and freeze to death in the back yard during a blizzard. Entertainment was going to church on Sunday, weather permitting. Babies were born at home and the only vaccine was small pox so the kids got all the childhood diseases that kids today don't have to worry about. The closest neighbor was a way off so families learned to depend on each other. In many places around the world life is not much different today but America is the land of opportunity. The future is bright for those who are willing to take advantage of the freedoms we enjoy.

Gays

Some Christians are opposed to homosexual behavior based on their interpretation of the bible and they are often castigated for these beliefs. Most Muslims consider homosexual behavior as unacceptable but they are normally not criticized. This is an example of how politics has infiltrated religion. Normally the Christians are conservatives in their politics and Muslims are liberal in their politics. Thus the issue gets lost in the fog.

Gender neutral

Avant garde couples are raising their children to be gender neutral. This describes the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another. This is a repeat of the way some mothers during the 60's raised their children. Little boys were given dolls and girls got trucks. Colors were the same for both. Many names for both sounded the same with girls names adding an i or y on the end such as bobbi and joey. As much as they tried the boys went back to playing with guns and the girls with dress up. Perhaps this time it will be different. Over the past 50 plus years gender differences have disappeared as women entered the work place and continued their education. These changes have benefited society as a whole but there still remains many ways in which the sexes are different, some good and some not so good. In our striving for equality let's not through out the baby with the bathwater.

Legal immigrant vaccines

If you are a legal immigrant You must receive the following vaccinations before being admitted as a permanent residence. Mumps, measles, rubella PolioTetanus and diphtheria toxoids Pertussis Haemophilius influenza type B Hepatitis B Varicella Influenza b Pneumococcal pneumonia Rotavirus Hepatitis A Meningococca.. Also certain diseases that may make you subject to quarantine (recently including cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers, severe acute respiratory syndromes, and novel or re emergent influenza (pandemic flu), as well as certain diseases that may pose a public health emergency of international concern when there’s a threat that you’ll bring that disease to the U.S. and the disease could affect the health of the American public.

Education

I subbed this week with a teacher who had three classes of anatomy with 10th and 11th graders. There were 71 students in all with 44 females, 34 Asian Americans one Black American male. I don't know the percentage of Asian Americans in this school but it is certainly not 48%. These students are interested in careers in medicine. The Asia students are either first or second generation brown skinned immigrants. They come from homes where 82% of the children live with both parents and education is a high priority. These families have the highest income of any group. It seems that education is more important than skin color when it comes to living the American dream.