Imagine your grandmother left penniless, a victim of a reload scam in which she has been targeted repeatedly and deliberately.
The scam works particularly well against the elderly because they are more susceptible after the first scam, have the inability to say no and are tempted with hope of recovering their initial loss.
The scam takes advantage of ignorance, fear and hope of recovery the elderly may experience during the process, and unless the victim receives legal aid, the end result is a catastrophe.
The War on Terror began with noble means: rid the world of terrorism and create a safer America. But in five years it has been subtly and shamefully turned into a reloading scam with the American public blindly following.
Hurricane Katrina has become a repetitive example of this scam. Blaming the president or the administration for the actual storm would be far too superstitious for my taste, but the results are something else entirely.
The evacuation before the storm was a fiasco, the initial response a series of bureaucrats tripping over each other accessing blame and racism - real and imagined - running rampant.
A year after the disaster many neighborhoods still have shells of homes, and a third of schools, hospitals and libraries are closed along with half of the public transportation. Thousands are still displaced and living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers.
Meanwhile, National Guard troops - intended to aid during domestic catastrophes - continued mobilization and deployment to Iraq.
President George W. Bush visited New Orleans and noted petty improvements, the White House issued a statement denouncing the "blame game" and the New Orleans Saints began a fantastic football season.
Governmental responsibility for its citizens had become and continues to be a sham.
We were convinced and returned to a normal state of safety and complacency and the scam was reloaded, this time with the intention of convincing us our basic rights could be violated.
Bush was granted the power to identify American citizens as enemy combatants and detain them indefinitely without being charged.
The domestic wire tapping program, implemented after Sept. 11 and disclosed only a year ago, allowed surveillance of American citizens without a warrant from a court.
Bush's violation of the Bill of Rights - aided by our intelligence agency and Congress - has become public and the American people sit in their chairs and read about it in the newspaper.
When the United States was founded one of the slogans that rallied the people together was, "Live free or die!" If we could muster up the motivation to rally around a slogan today perhaps it would be, "Live complacently and we'll let somebody else deal with it."
Internationally, the administration has pushed boundaries of the definitions of torture and attempted to subvert the Convention Against Torture ratified by Congress in 1994.
The global community is not complacent; it simply lacks ability to affect our foreign policy.
In addition to national and international scams that are robbing people of life and liberty, we are faced with local and personal victimization.
Federal funding for vaccines recommended for children by the Indiana State Department of Health, including influenza and meningitis, has been cut. Meanwhile, breakouts of measles and mumps have been reported in the Midwest.
Epidemics are capable of killing more people than most terrorists - it merely takes longer. We generally do not realize widespread fatalities from diseases are a catastrophe until we have counted the dead. By then it is much too late.
Tragic deaths cannot be an excuse to neglect our nation's youth, other vulnerable groups or the basic rights fought so hard for by the men throughout the life of this country.
Rest easy citizens, because the War on Terror is progressing and we are one step closer toward a safe society.
Write to Jason atjlhodson@bsu.edu
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