I received a LOT of feedback on the item about the "super-rich" in the last issue of eNews (27 July 07). Some thought it was just a "class-envy" rant, which it was not. Others thought it was yet another protest about the excesses of the super-rich, which it wasn't either.

It WAS a commentary on a country that is controlled by the media/industrial/military complex. The government subscribes to outdated "trickle-down economics" theories, the result of which is accumulation of huge gains at the top, at the expense of the middle class which is rapidly sinking into third-world status.

My European friends pointed out that some Europeans are not even doing as well as their American counterparts. Indeed, Europe is struggling between its two souls, Capitalism and Socialism, which at some level are incompatible. This doesn't minimize my point that America is pandering to the first, and ignoring the second.

The gross inequities are the visible "cracks" in the structure which no one wants to notice. The metaphor comes from the recent bridge catastrophe in Minneapolis. The deficiency was flagged in 1993, but ignored. One out of every eight bridges in the US are deemed to have structural problems. Yet this is not "news" till there was a death-toll. The cost to fix all the unsafe bridges is estimated at $65 billion - just one year of direct US military operating costs in Iraq. Sadly, this "wake-up call" on the bridges will remain a political football for only a few days, and will then sink into Katrina-like oblivion.

There are more "cracks" in the structure that are noticeable:

• 45-50 million Americans are too poor to afford health insurance. The US has slipped to No. 37 in the world for health care.
• In Dec. 2003 the US Congress passed a law that benefited big-pharma, while penalizing the poor and middle-class - a direct result of brash and unashamed lobbying. Heavy TV advertising now proclaims how much people will "save" with prescription plans - an awful distortion of the truth.
• The American education system is ranked (by UNICEF) as #18 out of 24 in the world, behind all other "first-world" countries.
• US presidential candidates are judged (at least initially) by the size of their financial war-chest, which buys votes through heavy TV advertising. The power-structure perpetuates.
• The National Debt continues to climb. In 2005 the public debt was 64.7% of GDP. China now holds the most US debt - over $1.2 trillion in mid-2007.
• Terrorism continues to demand our attention and use up our resources, while we continue to be close friends with the most repressive, non-democratic regimes in the Mid-East.

How will these problems be solved? Only AFTER more and more bridges have collapsed? Here's something I wrote over 4 years ago - JimPinto.com eNews, 10 January 2003:

"In a turbulent new century, this could perhaps be the beginning of a major transitional shift for humanity. We may be entering a profoundly different era. Nothing really different can come about without an awakening, not of just a few fringes, but of humanity itself. Today, the vast majority remains silent, feeling like helpless onlookers completely incapable of doing anything. How much pain before the paradigm shifts? How many millions must die before our collective conscience awakens?

• The rise of the super-rich
• Transition to a VERY different future
• Finding a softer approach for a new century