Current Events: The Turmoil

This was a rant I wrote up and never posted, but still relevant.

I will start this post quite different than most you are used to; I want to begin by saying " What the hell is going on around here?". Apparently we can't eat safely due to the Salmonella contaminated tomatoes.

Health officials confirmed cases in New York State of salmonella-tainted tomato poisoning Thursday.

That brings the total number of affected states to 23, and the toll of affected people has risen to 228.
The FDA blames the salmonella outbreak on uncooked red tomatoes, of the plum, Roma, and round-grown varieties.

We can not get the medicine we need with out worry about it being expired.

"Drug products have expiration dates for good reason. A drug's effectiveness can diminish over time as chemicals lose their potency," said Arthur Levin, executive director of the Center for Medical Consumers.

The godforsaken MTA can't get its act together and are planning on squeezing the shit out of mass transportation users when mass transportation is supposed to be pushed as the cheaper alternative, does anyone remember congestion pricing? Meanwhile the MTA has bled out over a billion dollars over the past 10 years due to personal injury cases, it being cheaper to pay out than to make needed changes to hundreds of train cars. Nassau county owes the MTA a nice chunk of millions for bus and train service, and obviously instead of doing something to assess the situation properly they just had the costs right back down to the same people who are suffering from inflation and outrageous gas prices (which super has passed $5 per gallon) the national average being $4.22. All of this meanwhile you have these big shots and ex-employees costing the MTA 14 million in lost revenue yearly.

Today we have prostitution rings with in walking distance of elementary schools.
We have corruption of politicians in both the local,state and federal government. We are becoming over-developed in the quiet communities, and we can't put together a coherent plan to fix Willet's Point.
We have Con Edison who holds onto property worth millions while they increase utility rates.
We have suffered greatly as the quality of live erodes, crime increases and we witness the destruction of the middle class.
We have people who are struggling to make ends meet while working far beyond the 9 to 5 and will still lose their house to foreclosure.
What can be done for the 4 family household who can not afford to spend 500 grand on a house, $2000 a month for an apartment and has too high an income for "affordable housing".
We live in an age where we need to speak up, in a way much louder than any blog or news publication can carry, an initiative if you will to carry beyond the lines of sex, race,language and economic class.

If you, like myself have had enough let your voice be heard. Whether it is a blog, a letter to congress, a sign posted on your front lawn, a brief mention at a community board meeting it will make a difference. The same way this post may instill a desire for change, and even if it has not you have still become more conscious of the current demise of our beloved borough. We need to avoid recession to the mean, because lets face it we deserve better than that.

Our voice is our most creative and musical instrument. It has great power to touch our lives and the lives of others.- Ted Andrews