For the past several months I have been using the word "depression" to describe the current economic conditions in the United States. I am not alone in stating that the United States is now in the midst of an economic depression. Economists are now starting to come to the obvious conclusion that we are in a depression and, that from an economic standpoint, things are getting worse and not better.

In an August 24th CNBC article titled, Economy Caught in Depression, Not Recession: Rosenberg; Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg was quoted as saying, "Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930s-style Depression".

This article also observed that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have slashed 2010 GDP projections to the 1.5% to 2% range.

We also know that the U.S. housing market is collapsing with home sales for July 2010 falling to their lowest level since 1995. According to the National Association of Realtors, "Sales of existing homes in July tumbled 27.2% from June levels and were off by 25.5% from July 2009".

The Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress have made a bad economic situation worse. Democrats at the Federal, State and local levels of government are destroying the United States. The sooner that all Americans recognize this fact and use the political-legal process to purge all government entities of this cancererous political party and their corrupt allies, the sooner we will be able to start healing the United States.

Bankruptcy filings in the United States have reached their highest level since 2005. This, according to an August 17, 2010 Reuters article titled, US Says Bankruptcies Reach Nearly 5-Year High. According to this article:

"For the year ended June 30, there were 1.57 million bankruptcies, up 20 percent from 1.31 million a year earlier. Consumer bankruptcies rose 21 percent to 1.51 million, and business bankruptcies rose 9 percent to 59,608. Quarterly (bankruptcy) filings surpassed 400,000 for the first time since a record 667,431 bankruptcies were begun in the fourth quarter of 2005..................."

In my August 11, 2010 Beacon article titled, THE UNITED STATES IS BANKRUPT, I observed that, "In his August 10, 2010 article, Professor Kotlikoff goes on to say, Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices".

For the 1.51 million consumers who filed for bankruptcy during the past year, there is not much to be happy or hopeful about. The type of "hope" preached by Obama is a cruel type of false hope that soothes the masses for the moment but does not feed the hungry or house the homeless. The failed economic programs of Obama and the Democrats have helped influential Democrats and the limousene liberals who prop them up. However, these programs have done little to help America's growing number of poor, hungry, and homeless citizens.  

How many more Americans have to go bankrupt, watch their hungry, sometimes homless children's dreams disappear and suffer the indignities of poverty before American voters wake up and change the course of our nation by electing new leaders who will do that which is necessary to reverse the painful mistakes inflicted on the United States by Obama and the Democrats?

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The FED buying more government debt to prop up the failed U.S. economy is like a person  running up debt on one credit card to pay down the debt on another credit card.

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On July 6, 2010, I wrote an article titled, WE ARE IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY. WHAT WILL YOU DO TODAY TO CHANGE AMERICA? In that article, I observed, "From an economic standpoint, California and the United States are doomed".

Today, I was reading an interesting article titled, U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It by Laurence Kotlikoff who is an economics professor at Boston University. In his article, Mr. Kotlikoff states:

"...........you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: 'The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.' It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.' "

In his August 10, 2010 article, Professor Kotlikoff goes on to say, "Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on.........................The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance."

Professor Kotlikoff's observation about a bankrupt U.S. economy is echoed in an August 11, 2010 article titled, "America is 'Bankrupt Mickey Mouse Economy" in which Jochen Wermuth, the Managing Partner at Wermuth Asset Management observed, "America today looks like Russia in 1998. Consumers, companies and the government are all highly indebted. America as a result is a bankrupt Mickey Mouse economy....." Wermuth made these comments after Federal Reserve Bank (FED) officials said they would buy more government debt. The FED buying more government debt to prop up the failed U.S. economy is like a person  running up debt on one credit card to pay down the debt on another credit card.

The Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress have destroyed the U.S. economy by building on the mistakes of the Bush Administration and burying the United States under a mountain of debt that will never be paid off and will only grow larger as the interest on the debt grows along with the increased government spending that is adding to the debt.

Most Americans continue to engage in the same delusional process of continuing to elect the same destructive, corrupt politicians to Federal, state and local political office thinking things will change. Things will only continue to get worse as long as we keep electing the same corrupt, morally bankrupt individuals to political office.

We have sowed the seeds of our country's economic destruction by refusing to recognize that the same morally and intellectually bankrupt people who we elect to political office, at all levels of government, will continue with their fraud, corruption and malfeasance that is destroying our nation as long as we allow them to do so.

With the proverbial walls of our nation crumbling into dust, how can Americans not recognize that the moral and economic fabric of our nation is being shredded by elected leaders, at all levels of government, who are morally unfit to serve our nation and their communities and who support economic policies that are turning America into a cesspool of poverty?

How can America's voters be so afraid to fundamentally change our Federal, state and local government's policies and direction when the status quo is destroying and bankrupting our nation?

As expected, the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) Board of Trustees voted to put a $186,000,000 bond measure on the November 2010 Election ballot to pay for the fiscal mismanagment that plagues the SMUHSD.

This $186 million SMUHSD bond measure follows the $137.5 million SMUHSD Measure D bond measure that was approved in 2000. This $186 million SMUHSD bond Measure follows the $298 SMUHSD Measure M bond measure that was approved in 2006.

Property taxes for those unfortunate enough to live within the taxing jurisdiction of the failing SMUHSD will be increased to pay for this suffocating amount of bond debt. This bond tax will also result in increased rents when  landlords pass on the cost of the higher taxes resulting from this outrageous amount of bond debt to their renters.

Our economy is now in the midst of a depression. Most responsible people are trying to reduce the amount of debt they owe. However, the destructive and dangerously deluded SMUHSD Board of Trustees overseeing the unioned up SMUHSD are burying taxpayers in more debt to pay for their ongoing fiscal mismanagement of the SMUHSD and the unsupportable salaries, benefits and retirement plans of the overpaid, bloated school staffs and administrators that suck down approximately 80% of school budgets.

The SMUHSD is allegedly in the business of educating students. Yet, even with the hundreds of millions of dollars being  drained from taxpayers by the SMUHSD, the educations received by most students in the SMUHSD could be construed as being little more than preparations for failure in a competitive world where jobs are scarce. As I see it, for all but the most highly motivated and successful students at the very top of their class, a SMUHSD education has little or no practical value.

The SMUHSD proves that public education in its present form is a failed experiment that does not produce acceptable results. The failure of U.S. public elementary and high schools to turn out sufficient numbers of functional, moderately educated adults is part of the reason why the United States economy has been reduced to rubble and we must import talented engineers, scientists, doctors and other professionals from other countries with better educational system.

It is beyond ridiculous to continue pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the SMUHSD. In my opinion, the SMUHSD is little more than a job works program for overpaid SMUHSD employees and administrators who do a poor job educating most of the students who attend the SMUHSD. As I see it, the SMUHSD has also become an extension of the public welfare system paying for SMUHSD District retirees who continue to make increasing demands upon the SMUHSD for post retirement support. Do these people know what the words "get lost" mean?

It is time for taxpayers living in the SMUHSD to stop approving these outrageous SMUHSD bond measures. It is also time for California's voters to start creating elementary and high school education reform that will scale down and eventually eliminate California's overpriced, failing public education system and hand parents vouchers so they can give their children the chance they deserve to receive quality educations at private schools where the students and their educations come first.

As I see it, in private education systems teachers and administrators put their students first. In public education, it appears that teachers and administrators put their paychecks, benefit and retirement plans first.

Do public school teachers and administrators spend more time complaining, organizing demonstrations, playing politics and working on new schemes to gouge taxpayers for higher wages and benefits then teaching? Would this help explain why so many of  their students drop out before graduating from high school and can barely read, write or do basic math? Is the saddest part of this catastrophe that these public education "professionals" don't seem to really care because  for most of them the job is all about the paycheck and not their students who ultimately pay the painful price life exacts from poorly educated people?

To support the corruption, waste, mismanagement and possibly illegal activities taking place in the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD), the SMUHSD Board of Trustees is going to approve and add a punishing tax measure to the November 2010 Election Ballot.

As I see it, the longer we ignore these destructive individuals on the SMUHSD Board of Trustees, their union supporters and the mercenaries they have hired with taxpayer dollars to manipulate us into driving up our taxes the worse our lives will get. You can choose to fight this gang and their crew here and now by working to reject this destructive tax they will put on the November Election Ballot or you can sit by and let them continue destroying the economy of San Mateo County with higher taxes, more corruption, more deception and more mismanagement.

The time has come to take the necessary and legally appropriate action to put an end to the tax rape of San Mateo County taxpayers. As I see it, the SMUHSD Board of Trustees refuses to balance the SMUHSD budget by making the job, wage, benefit and retirement plan cuts necessary to balance the SMUHSD budget, waste and squander taxpayer money and see taxpayers as suckers who will support their neverending mismanagement of the SMUHSD.

The SMUHSD Board of Trustees will never stop asking for more taxes. In my opinion, The SMUHSD is a mismanaged money pit that has a proven record of wasting taxpayer money on mismanaged projects, giving greedy uinions almost everything they want and refusing to make the budget cuts necessary to live within their means.

Passing the unnecessary bond measure that the SMUHSD Board of Trustees will put on the November 2010 Election Ballot will destroy many families in San Mateo County who are already overburdened with high mortgage payments and rents. This destructive tax measure will also lead to more waste and more mismanagment as the union shills on the SMUHSD Board of Trustees pay off the union bosses who help elect them by increase union salaries, wages and benefits and creating an even higher overhead for the SMUHSD that is not sustainable.

If you do not fight this destructive  tax, and it passes, then you will only have yourself to blame when you are priced out of living in San Mateo County.

Forget about the 2012 Mayan Calendar Doomsday prediction; that's a fantasy. Forget about asteroids crashing into the Earth and destroying the planet during your lifetime. Forget about Al Gore's wet dream that the Earth's ice caps are going to melt and fill your living room with ocean water.

The real threat to you and your family is that the United States is on a collision course with a fiscal crisis that will turn the value of your cash, savings, retirement plan, and any other U.S. dollar denominated security or liquid asset into worthless paper.

In a July 27, 2010 report titled, Federal Debt and the Risk of a Financial Crisis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) observed:

"Unless policymakers restrain the growth of spending, increase revenues significantly as a share of GDP, or adopt some combination of those two approaches, growing budget deficits will cause debt to rise to unsupportable levels......................................"

The Democrats won't stop spending and Republican pressure will not allow taxes to be raised to the suffocating levels that are required to put even a small dent in the mountain of debt the United States government is buried under.

The CBO report's debt crisis projection incorporates several changes to current law that are widely expected and will lead to an unprecedented Federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). To put this in perspective, the largest historical percentage of Federal debt to GDP occurred in World War II when, according to the information contained on page 2 of the CBO report, this percentage reached approximately 80%. After World War II, the percentage of Federal debt to GDP fell to approximately 25%. It is now projected that this figure could rise back up to World War II levels and beyond.

Right now, the United States government is surviving on credit. The U.S. government is paying the growing legions of highly paid Federal workers with borrowed money; the U.S. government is funding the war in Afghanistan with borrowed money; the U.S. government is bailing out the crooks on Wall Street and in corporate America with borrowed money. As a matter of fact, almost everything the United States Government now does is being paid for with borrowed money.

As anybody who has ever tried to live on credit cards knows, when debt and interest on the accrued debt pile up, you reach a point where you can no longer pay the debt and the creditors cut off your lines of credit. Not unlike the person trying to live on credit cards, the Federal, state and local governments in the United States are going to have their credit lines cut off.

It doesn't matter that the United States Treasury can print up as much money as it wants. This printed money is only as good as the full faith and credit of the United States Government. If creditor nations and other U.S. Government debt holders turn off the credit faucet, there is no credit and obviously no faith in the ability of the U.S. Government to pay its debt obligations.

The change necessary to save us from this financial catastrophe can only be accomplished by voting against the anti taxpayer politicians who refuse to stop the destructive spending patterns of the Federal, state and local governments and refuse to reduce the size of he Federal, state and local governments to levels that can be supported by current or reduced tax revenues.

Once again, the choice is yours. You can sit back, do nothing and let the same sleazy, lying, often corrupt politicians continue destroying our Federal, state and local governments or you can rise up, become politically active and help kick these bums out of office.

3 of 5 Members of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted against putting a sales tax increase measure on the November 2010 election ballot. 4 votes were necessary to put a sales tax increase measure on the ballot.

Supervisors Gordon and Gibson voted in favor putting the sales tax measure on the ballot while tax and squander Supervisors Groom, Tissier and Church voted for the meassure that would have increased the sales tax in San Mateo County if passed. Fortunately, for San Mateo County's taxpayers, anti taxpayer Supervisors Groom, Tissier and Church needed four votes to put their destructive sales tax increase measure on the November 2010 Election Ballot.

We are now left with the question as to whether Supervisors Groom, Tissier and Church are going to do the right thing for taxpayers and make the cuts to the pay, benefit and retirement packages of County employees of continue with their fiscal irresponsibility that has resulted in the financial problems the County of San Mateo is having.

It is interesting to note that although the sales tax idea was narrowly voted down, it was observed by a majority of the Board that they would be better off trying this sales tax hike stunt in 2012.

Church will be leaving the Board of Supervisors. Gordon will probably get elected to the office he is running for, Therefore, Groom and Tissier will be left to inflict more financial damage on San Mateo County taxpayers as they promote their reckless tax and squander agenda.

Voter patience is wearing thin for anti taxpayer politicians like Supervisors Groom and Tissier. If Groom and Tissier continue in their refusal to make the the cuts to the pay, benefit and retirement packages of County employees that are necessary to balance the County Budget and create an operational surplus, they will have to be recalled in an attempt to restore fiscal stability to San Mateo County's government.

During these very difficult economic times, we cannot continue to have people like Supervisors Groom and Tissier promoting the same broken, fiscally irresponsible agenda that has created the economic problems we are now all being forced to live with.

If you had the opportunity to save your city or county from being destroyed by a hostile force would you make the sacrifices necessary to do so or would you ignore the situation while you watched the destruction? The time has come for you to make that choice...................................................

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by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors is thinking about putting a ballot measure on the November 2010 Election Ballot to increase the sales tax in San Mateo County.

Taxpayers are living through what may be the worst depression since the 1929 Depression. America's middle class is being wiped out. It is both unconscionable and insane at this time for any Federal, State or local government entity to waste taxpayer money pursuing higher taxes. This type of reckless taxation does significantly more damage to San Mateo County's economy that has already been devastated by the current, brutal recession/depression than any possible benefit that might be gained by additional tax revenues.

Now, more than ever, we must lower taxes, cut government to the bone and provide economic incentives for private sector businesses to relocate to San Mateo County. This type of punishing taxation being imposed by anti taxpayer politicians, like the ones sitting on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, is a recipe for an even worse economic disaster than the one they have already created for the County of San Mateo and San Mateo County taxpayers.

As evidenced by the catastrophic amount of economic damage that the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and their cronies (i.e. Lee Buffington) have inflicted on the County of San Mateo and its government; the present gang that occupies seats on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, their immediate predecessors and the people who pull their puppet strings have been and are more destructive than a termite colony devouring a wood-frame house. They will not stop their tax rape and pillaging of San Mateo County's taxpayers until the appropriate legal remedies are used to stop them.

Increasing a sales tax often results in lower overall sales tax revenues. The increased sales tax being proposed by the cast of clowns on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors might actually lower overall sales tax revenues for the County of San Mateo. Of course, nobody would expect the  political hacks on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors to understand something as complicated as a discussion about how increasing sales taxes affects the supply - demand curve. When it comes to anything beyond the simple addition required to add up their campaign contributions from the unions who sponsor their Board seats, this is definitely the keep it simple stupid gang.

In these horribly tragic times, we are fighting for nothing less than the survival of our cities, counties, states and country. As citizens and taxpayers we must begin to make the sacrifices necessary to remove the current rotting crop of often corrupt, dangerously damaging elected officials from local, State and Federal political office. They must be replaced with good, decent people who will not allow themselves to be purchased and controlled by the narrow special interest groups who have been and are not only destroying San Mateo County but also California and the United States.

Taxpayers can no longer afford to pay all of these taxes to support wasteful, inefficient, overpriced, unioned up government operations that are leading us all down the road to bankruptcy. In San Mateo County, we have reached a point where the only option remaining is to remove anti taxpayer politicians from office . Otherwise, we will watch our schools as well as our local and county governments perish. The current tax and squander agenda of San Mateo County's local and county politicians is draining the life out of taxpayers and the institutions who serve them. If this is not stopped it will destroy us.

At the local, county, state and Federal level, we must start making the sacrifices necessary to remove anti taxpayer politicians from office. Those politicians who increase taxes and/or refuse to balance government budgets by making the cuts necessary to do so must go. These reckless, irresponsible, dangerous professional politicians and the mercenaries they pay with your taxpayer dollars, to promote their destructive anti taxpayer agenda, will never stop using our tax dollars against us in never ending efforts to raise our taxes to support their destructive agendas. They must be removed from office before they destroy not only San Mateo County but the State of California and the United States.

The union shills on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors apppear to be too afraid of the union bosses who control them, so they won't make the deep cuts to the job, salary, benefit and retirement plans of the unionistas working for the County government that are necessary to balance the County Budget. These unionized County workers suck down about 60% - 80% of the money spent by the County of San Mateo.

The very same San Mateo County Board of Supervisors that has blocked district elections in San Mateo County, because none of them could probably win a local election in the districts they so poorly represent, think it is easier to tax rape San Mateo County residents with a sales tax to support the the outrageous salaries and benefits of the unions who sponsor their embarrassing, pathetic political careers.

This destructive sales tax measure is inextricably bound to the Board of Supervisors refusal to support District elections. As long as there are no District elections for the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, and Board Members have to run expensive countywide campaigns, the  Board will continue to be controlled by the deep pocket special interest groups who have been and are destroying San Mateo County and creating the budget problems. If these big money special interest groups did not control the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, there would be no need for more taxes because the cuts that need to be made to balance the County Budget, and create a surplus, would be made. Money becomes a much less significant factor in a smaller district election. The current San Mateo County Board of Supervisors ,and the special interst groups who control them, know this and don't want district elections that will dilute tor eliminate their power.

The proposed tax rape of San Mateo County taxpayers by the San Mateo County Board Supervisors is also being supported by yet another pay to play telephone poll performed by the ubiquitous Godbe Research whose expensive telephone polls almost always seem to justify and support new taxes. How many tens of thousands of dollars did San Mateo County taxpayers have to pay Godbe to come up with this poll? 

We now have a $10 motor vehicle San Mateo County Vehicle Registration tax being placed on the November 2010 ballot, the San Mateo Union High School District will probably be putting a property tax measure on the November ballot, and now the San Mateo County Supervisors want to put a sales tax measure on the November 2010 election ballot that will increase sales taxes in San Mateo County well above the 10% mark.

The time for being patient with liberal tax and squander politicians, who cater to the narrow special interest groups whose intimidation tactics and highly suspect practices have created the economic nightmare we are now living through is coming to an end.

Budgets need to be balanced by cutting the size of government and not increasing taxes.

In San Mateo County, we are quickly coming to the point where it will be necessary for taxpayers to launch rolling recalls against all local politicians who vote to increase taxes. Any elected politician who votes to put a  tax measure on the ballot or who votes to increase fees gets an automatic recall launched against them.

The practice of elected politicians wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars hiring political mercenaries to promote their reckless tax and squander agenda must also be stopped by launching lawsuits against any government entity using tax dollars to pay off political mercenaries to promote their political agenda.

If you had the opportunity to save your city or county from being destroyed by a hostile force would you make the sacrifices necessary to do so or would you ignore the situation while you watched the destruction? The time has come for you to make that choice...................................................

The biggest problem that Snyder points out in his article is that most Americans are dependent upon someone else giving them a job.

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by Bill Baker, J.D.
Editor and Publisher, The San Bruno Beacon

In a July 15, 2010 article titled, The Middle Class in America is Radically Shrinking. Here are the Stats to Prove it, Michael Snyder cited 22 statistical facts supporting his conclusion that the American middle class is dying.

10 of the 22 facts that Mr. Snyder used to support the conclusion in his article are:

1). 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

2). 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

3). Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008*.

4). As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

5).  In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

6). More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

7). 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

8).  Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

9). The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

10). Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

*(NOTE: the total number of bankruptcies in 2008 / 1,117,771; 2007 / 850,912; 2006 / 617,660; 2005 / 2,078,415; 2004 / 1,597,462; 2003; 1,660,245; 2002 / 1,577,651).

In his article, Snyder writes, "The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world."  Snyder also observes that "the [U.S., state and local] government(s) keep passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States". Oppressive regulation of private business by the [U.S., state and local] government(s) has resulted in companies relocating their operations offshore in business friendly environments offering highly skilled workers who will work for lower wages and benefits.

The biggest problem that Snyder points out in his article is that most Americans are dependent upon someone else giving them a job. With very few exceptions, the entrepreneurial spirit, vision and genius that made America an economic powerhouse and powerful engine of commerce is long gone. The American public education system is a disaster, the traditional American family has all but disintegrated and the values that once made this country great have disappeared.

We have become a tragically pathetic nation of clerks, politicians, jail keepers, security guards, cops, lawyers, government bureaucrats, administrators and other support people. When the U.S. industrial base shrinks to a fraction of what it was and the private sector contracts, these jobs can no longer be funded, dry up and go away. Working as a cop, judge or government bureaucrat for a government entity that has no tax revenue doesn't pay very well. As we have seen, there is a move by some government entities, that do not have sufficient tax revenue, to simply close down.

We have an overabundance of people who can take orders, enforce and administer the law, keep records, jail people, answer telephones, flip hamburger patties  and take orders at the local 7-11. On the other hand, the United States has very few people who have the skill, talent and education to create the new wealth and jobs necessary to expand our economy.

Talented people are in short supply because our public education system does not appear to be capable of educating enough students who can read above the sixth grade level (or at all), write a coherent sentence, do simple math or understand basic science. This problem is sometimes exacerbated when public elementary and high school students are taught by their teachers that no matter how bad they do they should still be rewarded. Elementary and high school students in the public education system are often taught that self-esteem and getting rewarded for failure are more important than actual results. The problem is that self-esteem is a by-product of success and failure, no matter what type of pretty package you want to wrap it in, is not a self-esteem builder. In the real world, failure is not a viable option. Talented people are also in short supply because our local, state and Federal governments strangle new ideas and private sector companies by regulating and taxing them to death. These government entities bite the hands that feed them and then wonder why most companies are leaving the United States and taking their jobs overseas.

We pour billions of borrowed dollars into our public schools that continue churning out poorly educated conformists who can follow someone else's rules in a controlled environment and are dependent upon someone else giving them a job. These people are being trained for jobs that will not exist in the next 5-10 years and most of them stand a better than even chance of spending most of their lives as chronically unemployed people living on the edge of or in poverty.

We must start training entrepreneurs and not employees. The days of working 20 or 30 years for someone else and then expecting a fat retirement check every month for the rest of your life because you showed up for work and did some job that a machine or $1 a day worker could do are quickly coming to an end. The ridiculous sense of entitlement that many American workers have is based on the bizarre notion that their labor is somehow worth more than the labor of a worker in a foreign country who often possesses superior skills and almost always has a stronger work ethic than their American counterpart.

Fifty or sixty years ago, America was the most powerful industrial engine in the world and American workers were doing the best work in the world. Today, with a few exceptions (i.e., GE and Boeing), the limited number of products that are still manufactured in America are either manufactured by a foreign company operating their plant in America or by an American company operating on the fringes of whatever industry they are in. That being said, even the biggest U.S. companies, like GE and Boeing, are finding it extremely difficult to compete against foreign competitors whose products are often superior.

We have reached a point where chronic unemployment is a fact of life for millions of Americans. Sooner or later, as tax revenues dry up, governments at all levels will no longer be able to serve as the traditional employers of last resort and support their richly paid taxpayer supported labor forces. Sooner or later, when economic reality sets in, governments at all levels in the United States will have to lay off hundreds of thousands of government workers who will join the ranks of the unemployed and exacerbate the chronic unemployment problem.

We have reached a point in the United States, where it really doesn't matter how polished your resume is, how well you interview or how much education or experience you have. With limited exceptions, we have reached a point where the traditional notion of depending on someone else to give you a full time job with benefits and a retirement plan is quickly becoming a wet dream. From an economic standpoint, the traditional retirement model cannot be supported because there are not enough resources available to support this model.

Right now, most Americans have to choose between creating their own jobs and wealth; working at a low paying service or retail job; working at a mind numbing, dead end government job; living off of whatever form of government welfare is available at a very low subsistence level; or dropping out of society and quite literally living off the land.

If you think things are bad now, as the song goes; you ain't seen nothing yet.

The San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) is using taxpayer money for political purposes by paying $7,500 to the political consulting firm TBW&B for assistance with the proposed bond issue being considered by the SMUHSD Board of Trustees. This, in addition to the political aspects of the work being done for the SMUHSD by Godbe Research for which this firm was paid $35,000 of taxpayer money.

It may become necessary to file a lawsuit against the SMUHSD to address these issues.