We live in turbulent times. We are at war with a new enemy. The sad thing is, the enemy is amongst us.

Each day as I listen to the news or read opinions of others, I see the decaying of our own nation. The united front that this country once held is failing. We are at war with each other.

War comes in the disguise of poor education, poor medical attention, poor policies. Each day we are becoming more enslaved to the golden handcuff of government enslavement. This site shows the budget of the Unites States for 2003. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2003/app_down.html Each new feel good policy to aid someone who has less enslaves those who have more. The more taken from me and mine, the more enslaved I am becoming to my government.

We pump more and more tax dollars into education, social medicine, welfare, foreign welfare, all programs that are failing horribly.

As we look at our children today, it is a frightening picture I see. I see angry, spoiled, and scarred individuals. Individuals that refuse to be accountable to their mistakes. Children who can barely read or comprehend simple logic. According to the Dept of Education in October 2000, there were 3.8 million 16- through 24-year-olds who were not enrolled in a high school program and had not completed high school (table 3), accounting for about 10.9 percent of the 34.6 million people in this age group.

The United States has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and births in the western industrialized world. Teen pregnancy costs the United States at least $7 billion annually.

Nearly four in 10 young women become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20—nearly one million a year. Eight in ten of these pregnancies are unintended and 79 percent are to unmarried teens.

"FBI data confirms the national problem of rampant juvenile violent crime. In 1996, juveniles accounted for nearly one-fifth-19 percent-of all criminal arrests in the United States. Persons under 18 committed 15 percent of all murders, 17 percent of all rapes, and 32.1 percent of all robberies. In 1996, juveniles age 15 to 19, who are only 7 percent of the population, committed 22.1 percent of all the crimes, 22.7 percent of all the violent crimes, and 32 percent of property crimes. These disturbing figures demonstrate the need to reform the juvenile justice system that is failing the victims of juvenile crime, failing too many of our young people, and ultimately, failing society."

The runaway data is especially discouraging for girls, who represent 57%, or 81,003 of the 141, 844 kids arrested for running away from home in 1996. A large number of these troubled girls are fleeing abusive households. A recent survey of girls at a runaway shelter found that more than 70 percent of them said they were on the streets because they were leaving sexually abusive households (in that study, close to 40 percent of boys reported being on the run from sexual abuse).

These are the future, America, are we proud of what we have created?

Our technology is advancing at a speed of incredible rate. New science is opening up fields that have potential for cures of horrid diseases. New advances are being made in computers and entertainment. All things to speed up our lives and enhance our pleasures.

And yet, the medically needy are being told by insurance companies, “sorry, you do not qualify.” The elderly are put into a position to scrimp on medication to keep their hearts beating. A welfare mom can bring a child into the ER with a cold, but a man in his 70’s brings his sweet little wife to the ER due to heart failure can be denied oxygen at home because she is not hypoxic enough. Our medical system is the best in the world and yet we have millions of Americans who cannot afford the care.

Children are watching the destruction of their parent’s relationship. In the United States, the 2000 census showed that 24.8 million, or nearly 24 percent of the nation's 105.5 million households, were the traditional "Ozzie and Harriet" home with married parents and children.

By comparison, 9.8 million households, or 9 percent of all U.S. households, were headed by a man or woman raising a child alone or without a spouse living at home.

In the 1990 census, 26 percent of homes were headed by a married mother and father, and 8 percent by a single parent.

Where is our outrage? We rage, we protest, over trees, over the word, “God” being said in public, and yet we ignore these statistics.

I think the demise of our great nation is really pointed out in the areas I have mentioned. We have ignored our children. We are ignoring our elderly and their needs.

Most importantly, we are ignoring our politicians, who are taking liberties with our laws and our money. They are enslaving us to their laws. Laws that many never read and yet sign. They passed 90 bills in 2002. We keep electing these crooks.

Bill Summary & Status for the 107th Congress. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery