A Palm Pilot America

It has been three weeks since a standing wave has inhabited my house.  The powers at be say, "You think that's bad, boy.  Try this on for size."  It's the way satan works.  Things in my house jump around.  I spill things.  I can't feel anything, because a low frequency standing wave is in my house.  Radar is a standing electromagnetic wave.  What could cause a standing wave in your home?  Ask our iconic war department supported by defense contractors who feed on America.  Recently we went to a meeting at City Hall concerning the destruction of Mirror Lake dam.  The city owns it, and therefore are responsible for its reconstruction.  Luckily past Governor Pat McCrory now is the head of FEMA.  The city of Fayetteville was able to lobby Washington and get FEMA to pay for the reconstruction of our dam.  The only problem is it will take over a year, and Mirror Lake Drive, an entrance to our neighborhood will remain closed until then.  It is an inconvenience.  One must drive around one's arsehole to get to the store.  Okay.  The meeting was not helpful.  Mainly it explained the repair timeline.  A consulting firm had to be hired by the city to accepts bids from engineering firms competing for the contract to repair the dam.  What it showed me was how government works.  There is city money, and it is being solicited by firms who need the work and want the money.  Those in power hand out the taxpayers or in this case FEMA's dollars.  It is politics with a capital P.  They are not really interested in the opinions of the citizens.  These guys were nervous and squirrely.  What was the big deal?  2.5 million to repair the dam.  That is a lot of scratch, and by looking at it it doesn't seem like it would take that to fix it.  Because FEMA is reimbursing the cost of repairing the dam, all of these factions must sign on and supervise the repair.  It was made clear by the City Manager that it must be repaired to exactly the same specifications it was.  Neighbors asked if a sidewalk could be added.  The consulting firm said such a small addition was not a problem.  The City Manager disagreed, and pointed out no modifications could be made.  It also has been made clear that the dam must be rebuilt to higher standards, yet the concrete spillway, in essence the dam itself did not fail.  It still is there.  I remember when they replaced it the last time.  What happened was water cascading over the top of the dam, over the street, and washed out the back side.  It is an earthen dam, but a concrete structure stops and controls the water.  It still is in tact.  I doesn't look like it would take much to haul in dirt and rock and fill in the damage.  They all ready have replaced a large sewer pipe.  2.5 million to pay all of these people that must be involved.  Politics.  This is what Trump is good at, circumventing red tape and getting real estate built.  I bet he could rebuild the dam for half of that figure.  I came out of the high profile meeting with an icky feeling of local corruption and politics.  I am glad FEMA will pay the city back for repairing our dam, but those involved gave me the creeps.  They appeared to me as tight-pant city slickers, but those are the ones after city money.  One month ago I wrote a letter to the editor of the Fayetteville Observer suggesting Rowan Street Park was a more appropriate location for a city skatepark.  Today on the front page a military collaboration readying soldiers for deployment to the Middle East confirmed my assertion.  It seems they contemplated several locations for a city skatepark, and my suggestion was best.  Rowan Street Park.  I chuckled out loud.  I am glad that agreed.  It was validation that my suggestion was appropriate.  The article said the soldiers' suggestions would save the city loads of money.  That is because soldiers deploying to Fort Bragg have no interest in city money.  Fayetteville regularly allots money to consulting firms for studies on everything.  Large sums of money are dished out for studies.  There is a rail study online, an in depth look at rail traffic in Fayetteville, yet no one has paid attention.  They suggested a new section of track should be built connecting the spur servicing Fort Bragg.  It would keep two mile long military trains from having to back up onto Russell Street.  Never has it been done.  Why?  CSX-T pulls trains out of Fort Bragg.  The Cape Fear Railways puts them together in the Honeycutt Marshalling Yard and pushed them out to Fort Junction where CSX-T picks them up.  I don't like CSX-T much, because I remember both the Seaboard and Atlantic Coastline railroads.  Rail traffic in Fayetteville was existent but not prolific.  Now CSX-T has built two huge railyards in the modest towns of Hamlet and Rocky Mount.  Norfolk Southern has large yards in North Carolina as well.  One is en route to Wilmington, and CSX-T wanted to horn in on the action to the port of Wilmington.  The east/west line that services Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point juntions the north/south line in Pembroke.  Lumberton is one of the poorest regions in the nation.  STRACNET or the Strategic Rail Corridor assures that munition trains are protected, hence rail traffic in Fayetteville and surrounding areas is imminent.  It is here to stay, and there are many areas of Fayetteville that have been developed with neighborhoods adjacent to the CSX-T mainline tracks.  Surprise!  What's the big deal?  Like many things in America that have dropped from public consciousness rumbling freight trains are not an augmentation of quality of life.  They have contributed to declining property values in Cumberland County.  It stays well hidden.  CSX-T is a Fortune 500 company, and their lobbying arm is strong.  They get what they want, and we suffer in the refuse of their activity.  This is the refuse of the large military industrial complex.  I don't, like most business-owners in Fayetteville, look at the soldiers of Fort Bragg as a menace.  Conversely they provide the economic prowess of what was once prosperous Fayetteville.  With these men and women deployed to fight another man's war, dollars are not flowing in Fayetteville.  Still we wallow in the refuse of the military machine, its support mechanism, and the support mechanism of surrounding industry.  There was a time not long ago when trucking became a viable industry.  When gas was reasonable drivers didn't mind hitting the road in a semi to haul freight down the interstate.  CSX-T put a stop to that.  They became a corporate monopoly like most businesses in America these days.  Regulation, something that was necessary through out federal government, was dismantled under George W. Bush.  After America saw fit to break up the telecommunications industry into the Baby Bells, now with deregulation companies have been forming mega-corporations wielding the majority of power in America and the rest of the world.  At the turn of the century Trusts were of a similar threat.  Money that was trusted from generation to generation ensured power stayed in the hands of the wealthy.  I have a friend, a peer, a confidant, who needs money to build his business.  Once it was called a small business loan, and they were common.  They were necessary for middle class America to function.  Now there is no middle class, and America is such a shell.  We are a shell company standing for nothing.  I watch television, and occasionally I see things of worth.  Things I see of worth are culture not embraced, utilized, or championed in America.  We are a vulgar, crass, selfish society, or so we have become.  In the film Original Sin, there was a scene in a Latin American brothel.  There was nothing sordid or depraved about the place.  Conversely to me it made perfect sense.  Having traveled on cruise ships for over a decade, I am familiar with cultural habits not practiced in America.  Yes, on the outskirts of Las Vegas, there are compounds who engage in legal prostitution.  For the most part this practice is illegal in America.  It may not be because tight-ass far-right extreme Republicans deem it inappropriate.  It is because like most things, they want to have and control America's money despite how it should be dispatched via the needs and desires of Americans.  Instead we get strip clubs where you piss your money away not actually getting what you desire.  This has been the ill fate of Capitalism for some time.  Businesses have begun to dupe the American populace rather than understanding and providing what we want.  Luckily politics has loosened the reins on pot.  What a strange thing.  We pay a tariff to the federal government for gasoline, alcohol, and cigarettes, fifty percent to be exact, for things that are considered luxuries.  In fact they have become necessities to deal with living in the refuse of the military industrial complex and corporate America.  We medicate ourselves out of necessity.  We cannot afford appropriate medical care.  We, like most other civilized countries, cannot adequately provide quality medical care for our citizens.  We are not providing a solid public education.  At the grassroots level America has failed at most things, except addicting our people to their palms.