According to the news, Bernie Madoff “made off” with billions; he swindled from clients and, worse, numerous charitable organizations. Yet, he is not in jail. Madoff and his wife sill live in his expensive and exclusive New York penthouse. Why is he allowed the privacy to dispense his ill-gotten gains to family and friends? Every time I see a photo of him, he is smiling. As if he is amused by the situation. He should be ashamed.

Governor Blagojevich, rather than appear repentant when he was caught trying to sell a Senate seat, became a poet. Blagojevich is now a celebrity and will probably be given millions to write a book. America is in disarray. We reward people for bad behavior. Regular folks are having a hard time just getting by, but the rich, the ugly, and deceitful are rewarded.

In the corporate news, banks and corporations are said to have used their bail-out monies to reward billions to executives who committed acts of greed that brought the world of trouble and foreclosures to ordinary Americans. While corporations dream of spiffy new corporate jets, regular folks are living on the streets.

Our national security is insecure. Our bridges are falling down. The next American to retire will be 93. Nobody is embarrassed to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Our elected-leaders considered it a joke when it was suggested that bail-out money should be given to American citizens to pay off their bills.

We speak badly of each other and wish bad luck on all who oppose us. Rush Limbaugh is not embarrassed that he wants President Barack Obama to fail. He should be. That is wishing a lot of bad luck on people he doesn’t even know. If the President of the United States fails, living is only going to get harder in America.

Whatever happened to “nice?” Is it something we left back in the 20th Century? We live in a world of golden calves and good sense has lost its way. America is no longer a polite society. Just the other day, the United States House of Representatives sent a callous message to the elderly. Mostly, no one noticed.

On Wednesday, January 28, 2009, The U.S. House defeated a bill to postpone the transition from analog to digital television broadcasting by four months. By voting no on the DTV Bill, the last few grandmothers and grandfathers were denied an opportunity to catch up and make the transition to a digital world at a slower pace.

On February 17, 2009, it will become impossible to receive television transmission with an old roof-top antenna. All broadcast television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and begin broadcasting only in digital airwaves. Digital broadcasting will allow stations to offer improved picture and sound quality to its customers. Bottom line, cable television will be able to make more money. Authorities have seen fit to narrow our choices. I thought the people of the United States owned the airways…

There can only be a few people left in America who still depend on rabbit-ears for their televisions. How many black and white televisions are still in use? Surely, it is only a few hundred? But what about the few senior citizens who will notice? If they had been granted a four-month extension, some seniors will have popped off before the new DTV deadline of June 2009 came about and missed the whole aggravation.

Instead of giving Grandma and Grandpa a break, instead of being polite or even respectful, congress has decreed that our grandparents must stretch their fixed monthly budget to pay for cable. For-profit lobbyists were persuasive enough to silence Grandma and Grandpa’s television.

While I am sure I have oversimplified the digital television issue, the message I get from the debacle is that it is no longer necessary to even put up a pretense of humanity. It has become commonplace to spin a bad act as “misunderstood” in this “no holds barred” digital world where only the rich, the elected, and Exxon profit.

Similar things have happened before, on the night of September 2, 1752, the American pioneers blew out the candles; went to bed; slept all through the night and woke on September 14, 1752. Twelve days were discarded as they slept.

During the night, the Julian calendar was thrown out, and switched over to the New Style Gregorian Calendar. In switching calendars, historians were able to correct many mistakes made by a lunar calendar. I doubt many folks noticed back then. They were busy building a new world; a settler was less concerned with the date on a calendar as he was with putting food on the table and keeping a roof over his family. It is much the same as today. In America, the days of Pope Gregory’s calendar brought about new ideas such as freedom and liberty. We brought forth a new country founded on principles that were honest and true.

I do not know what to expect in the new digital world, it seems that something bad is announced every day. In many corners, the world is not a pretty or safe place. Nobody seems to like anybody very much…and who can you trust? America is in disarray and a lot of folks are fed up with all of the shenanigans going on around the world today.

It is hard not to be discouraged, but we only need to recall the courage and the decency of the generations that have gone before us. If our celebrities, executives and leaders have no honor, they do not speak for us. As Grandma and Grandpa know, what goes around comes around. Things do not change quickly, but together we can demand a higher standard. We are survivors, us regular folk. Not only should we let the elderly keep their televisions operating at minimal cost, we should listen to them when they tell us that there are always consequences for our actions and our words…even in this Brave New Digital World.”