If
our Founding
Fathers
were alive today, what would they think of America? Surely
they would be very proud that the United States stretches from the
Atlantic to the Pacific and has built some of the most amazing cities
that the world has ever seen. They would probably be
surprised that the country they founded went on to become the greatest
economic machine in the history of the world, and they would be
absolutely astounded by things like our interstate highway system and
the Internet. However,
there are quite a number of things that they would be horrified about
as well. The fact that over 40 million Americans are
dependent on the federal government for their daily food would be
deeply disturbing to our founders. Also, the fact
that the U.S. government has accumulated the greatest
mountain of debt in human history would be incredibly distressing to
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the
founders. But perhaps most of all, our founders
would be absolutely disgusted that the land where Americans could once
be free to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has become
so tightly regulated and controlled that Americans dare
not even squeak without the permission of the federal
government.
Needless
to say, our founders would certainly not understand many of our
institutions or many of the advanced technologies that we have
today. But without a doubt they would be able to grasp how
far we have fallen as a nation and how far we have strayed from the
fundamental principles that they enshrined in our founding
documents. The United States is a much different place today
than it was in 1776, and unfortunately many of the
changes have been for the worse.
The
following are 50 mind blowing facts about modern America that our
Founding Fathers never would have believed....
#1
In 2010, not only does the United States have a central bank, but it
also runs our economy and issues all of our currency. The
Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95
percent since 1913 and it has been used to create the biggest mountain
of government debt in the history of the world.
#2
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that U.S.
government agents can legally sneak onto your property in the middle of
the night, place a secret GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep
track of you everywhere that you go.
#3
The 50 wealthiest members of Congress saw their collective fortunes
increase by 85.1 million dollars to
$1.4 billion in 2009.
#4
The U.S. government has accumulated a national
debt that is rapidly approaching the 14 trillion
dollar mark.
#5
All over the United States, asphalt roads are being ground up and are
being replaced with gravel because
it is cheaper to maintain. The state of South
Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt
road into gravel over the past year, and 38 out of the 83 counties in
the state of Michigan have now turned
some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.
#6
Americans now owe more than $849 billion on student
loans, which is more than
the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.
#7
In 2010, Americans waste an astounding amount of food. According to a study by the California
Integrated Waste Management board, 63 percent of the average
supermarket's waste stream is food. When you break that down, it means
that each supermarket
wastes approximately 3,000 pounds of food each year.
#8
The city of Cleveland plans to sort through curbside trash
to ensure that people are actually recycling
properly. If it is discovered that some citizens are
not recycling they will be hit with very large
fines.
#9
Once upon a time, U.S. industry was the envy of the world.
But since 1979, manufacturing employment in the United States has
fallen by 40 percent.
#10
Even though the U.S. population has exploded in size, the
number of Americans with manufacturing jobs today
is smaller than the number of Americans who were
employed in manufacturing in 1950.
#11
Having one out of every eight Americans enrolled in the food
stamp program is now considered "the
new normal" and Americans continue to drop into poverty in
astounding numbers.
#12
One out of every six Americans is
now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.
#13
A
family of four actually has difficulty surviving on an income
of $50,000 a year in America in 2010.
#14
Barack Obama is backing a proposal to create a
national database that will store the DNA
of all individuals who have been
arrested, even if they end up not being convicted of a crime.
#15
In 2010, it takes the average unemployed American
worker over
8 months to find a job.
#16
The U.S. government has made some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S.
citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug
smugglers. The federal government has
actually posted signs more than 100 miles north of the
Mexican border warning travelers that certain areas
are unsafe because of drug and alien
smugglers.
#17
One recent survey of last year's college graduates discovered
2010-06-20 news that
80 percent moved right back home with their parents after
graduation.
#18
In one of the very first military commissions held under the Obama
administration, a U.S. military judge ruled that confessions obtained
by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.
#19
The average American worker now pays literally dozens
of different kinds of taxes each year.
#20
In recent years the U.S. government has spent $2.6 million tax
dollars to
study the drinking habits of Chinese prostitutes and
$400,000 tax dollars to pay researchers to cruise six bars in
Buenos Aires, Argentina to find out why gay men
engage in risky sexual behavior when drunk.
#21
Christians are being arrested and thrown in jail in some areas of the
United States for
quietly passing out Christian literature on public sidewalks.
#22
The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it
will begin using cutting edge analysis software
to
predict crime by young delinquents and will place
"potential offenders" in prevention and education
programs.
#23
Organic milk is now considered such a national
crisis that the FDA has been conducting military
style raids on
Amish farmers in the state of Pennsylvania.
#24
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently
announced that they are considering a crackdown on
farm dust.
#25
According to a new CDC report, nearly half of all Americans now
use prescription drugs on a regular basis.
#26
Oakland, California Police Chief Anthony Batts says that due to severe
budget cuts there are a number of crimes that his department will
simply not be able to respond to any longer. The
crimes that the Oakland police will no longer be responding to include
grand theft, burglary, car wrecks,
identity theft and vandalism.
#27 Today,
Americans are losing their homes in staggering numbers. One out of every seven
mortgages was delinquent or in foreclosure during the first
quarter of 2010.
#28
Many of our leading scientists are now calling themselves
"transhumanists" and are openly proclaiming that a future
where men have fully merged with machines is inevitable.
#29
Americans who
spend large amounts of cash are viewed as "potential
criminals" by the U.S. government in 2010.
#30 New
full body security scanners going into airports all across the United
States can
actually see through
our clothing and produce very clear and very detailed images
of our exposed bodies as we walk through
them.
#31 The
U.S. financial system has become a massive gambling
parlor in 2010. As a result, a horrific derivatives
bubble has developed that threatens to destroy our entire
economy at any moment. Nobody knows exactly how big
the derivatives bubble is, but low estimates place it at
around 600 trillion
dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion
dollars. Once that bubble pops there simply will not be
enough money in the entire world to fix it.
#32
The U.S. government is spending an amount of
money equivalent
to approximately 25.4
percent of GDP
this year.
#33 Today, 10,000 people make 30% of the total income in the United States.
#33 Today, 10,000 people make 30% of the total income in the United States.
#34
A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation discovered
that 250 employees of the Defense Department used credit cards
or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual
situations. However, the investigation also found
that the Pentagon investigated only a handful of those cases.
#35
According to a recent poll of Americans
between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was
their biggest fear. The
remaining 39% thought death was scarier.
#36
Approximately
57 percent of Barack Obama's 3.8 trillion dollar
budget for 2011 consists of direct payments to individual Americans or
is money that is spent on their behalf.
#37
A recent Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and
extremist groups lists
"constitutionalists" and "survivalists" alongside
organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood.
#38
The U.S. trade
deficit has exploded to nightmarish proportions over the past
two decades. Every single month tens of billions more
dollars goes out of the United States than comes into
it. Essentially, the United States is becoming far poorer as
a nation each and every month.
#39
Factories
are closing in droves across the United States because the
American people would rather buy things made in China.
#40
Millions upon millions of good paying middle class jobs are
being shipped off to China and
they are never coming back. Meanwhile, U.S.
politicians stand by idly and do nothing.
#41
Some analysts now believe that China could become the largest economy
in the world by the year 2020.
#42
If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting
principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual
U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the
neighborhood of four
to five trillion dollars.
#43
According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S.
households have at least one person that is currently
searching for a full-time job.
#44
The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value. An
item that cost $20.00 in 1970 will cost you $112.35
today. An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 will cost you $440.33
today.
#45
Major international organizations are actually proposing that the
United States start considering the adoption of a truly global
currency.
#46
Students at a high school in Missouri have built a car that they claim
can get up to 450 miles per gallon. On
another note, some of the top energy experts in the world
believe that thorium could solve our energy problems and
supply very cheap energy for society for hundreds of thousands of
years. But in today's world technologies such as these are
endlessly suppressed by the rich and powerful.
#47 One
Colorado high school student is seeking an
explanation from officials at his school after he was
ordered by security guards to remove American flags
from his truck
because they might make
other students at the high school "uncomfortable".
#48
Three California high school students were recently
forced to remove their
American flag
T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.
#49
Memorial crosses erected along Utah public roads to honor fallen state
troopers have been found unconstitutional [THIS HAS
BEEN OVER RULED.] by a federal appeals court and now must be removed
permanently.
#50 One
group of high school students made national headlines recently when
they revealed that a security guard ordered them to stop singing the national anthem during
a visit to the Lincoln
Memorial.