News Desk Editor At Large - Vacancy, Needed, Urgent!

 Our local newspaper's subscription rate has risen to almost $600.00 a year.  We are canceling not because we don't want the almost daily paper, but because it is too expensive.  I don't believe it is too expensive in light of our recent Covid epidemic.  If you calculated the cost of running a small local newspaper the old fashioned way - hiring personnel, running a printing press, and gathering and managing news, it would be exorbitant.  It would be exorbitant in light of the discovery that the smart phone has predicated the extinction of many American businesses.  The best metaphor is iTunes which single-handedly crippled the American music industry.  If you chose to replace thriving, democratic, capitalist businesses with one machine, then you must suffer the consequences.  Enter "The Borg."  We will be absorbed by the Borg.  We have been absorbed by the Borg, and Covid helped.  My point is I don't feel $4.00 for a dozen eggs is exorbitant.  It seems that way, but if you calculated the value of one dozen fresh hen-laid eggs and the infrastructure it needs to provide these eggs, then they would be worth it.  Instead America has opted to devalue most things that should be paramount to our health and happiness.  These are grassroots processes, local traditions, and small family businesses which once were a mainstay of the American economy.  Then the Borg arrived, Big Business, which always has been around.  Then George W. Bush, under the pressure of lobbyists, began to deregulate most American corporate entities.  This means there is no oversight of their processes, and pretty much they can do whatever they want like dump PFAS into our rivers and streams.  The best metaphor for today is the rail industry.  I was happy they were on the cusp of a strike, because this industry has been operating out of the bounds of American decency for quite a while.  All you have to do is stick your head outside your house and listen.  When Hunter Harrison was hired to pilot CSX, he brought Precision Railroading with him.  Their trains got longer, and locomotive emissions instead of only being at the front of the train moved to the front, middle, and back.  Now thanks to their new CEO America has a two mile long cell of thundering, vibrating, radiating funk.  If you thought the train was going to disappear into the horizon, surprise!  At the middle of the train are two or three running locomotives, and surprise again.  At the end where a caboose once sat carrying able and viable railroad workers earning them salaries and making a living, now there is another locomotive.  The "consist" now is spread out over the length of the train.  When the stampede comes, truly now it is an overwhelming and omnipresent event.  It has become constant.  The emissions from these locomotives, while the greenhouse gases may seem less, are great.  Now they are different.  With the huge DC to AC conversion of the Norfolk and Southern, airborne alternating current is rampant.  Add G5, Wifi, satellite, and military microwaves to the stew, and America is being electrocuted.  We may not catch on fire from "Old Sparky," but the effects of this R/F and EMF energy are wreaking havoc on our society.  Why has violent crime escalated?  Why are zealots shooting up schools?  Why are we killing each other?  Perhaps it has something to do with our bodies using and needing electricity to control our behavior.  Our nerves send electrical impulses, and compared to what is in our air today, we don't have a chance.  Change of subject.  From now on when you hear the name Trump, think of slave labor.  Trump/Slave Labor.  That is what he is.  His philosophy is and always has been you should work for free while he gets rich.  Donald Trump was a return to plantation America reliant and dependent upon slave labor.  We watched as his four years of a failed presidency preached this mantra to gullible, needy, and willing disciples.  A return to slave labor and plantation America?  When did a regressive political movement become vogue?  It is called Deconstructionism.  Screw things up so royally that mayhem ensures.  Get the masses fighting themselves.  America's number one problem is the abandonment of the notion of a free, ladder climbing, mobile America.  The idea that in America there are enough jobs in small businesses and corporate structures to keep people working and earning a living.  The idea that we can earn a LIVING WAGE with respect, dignity, and happiness.  Trump's ideology has ruined this philosophy.  Instead he wants an authoritarian dictatorship.  The fight against Communism never has waned; it was just disguised and repackaged.  When you disenfranchise most of America by eliminating them with disease, with lack of opportunity, and creating tribal war the only thing left is corporate America.  Corporate America is those who sit in their ivory towers sipping brandy and moving money via the internet.  They don't really labor.  They are not real people.  They have no grassroots inclinations.  They are selfish self-proclaimed gods living in their own narcissism.  What built America was not corporate America.  Corporate America, the handful of prominent immigrating families who knew how to capitalize on fresh resources, used American labor to achieve their success.  They provided an infrastructure for what we understand as a free market system.  They employed Americans at all educational levels and provided sustenance for human life.  The government had to police their activity and provide assurances for these workers.  Temptation always is at play.  The best metaphor for this is the Jazz Age and the ensuing Great Depression.  Checks and balances are necessary to keep things honest.  I am no economist, but I know America can work.  We have tossed our values into the wind and forsaken the majority of the population of America.  The elite 1% need no more money.  They are just in it for the entertainment.