Europe to America

Europe to America

Dr. A. H. Krieg

Having just returned from a 4-week trip to Switzerland, the nation in the exact center of Europe and destination for thousands of Europeans for summer vacation, I thought you might be interested in some comments on our trip. 

The strongest memory relates to governments and societies and how they work. The comment of an Italian tourist exemplifies this. “What a wonderful and beautiful place this is, everything works, everything is on time, and everyone is respectful, there is no haggling, and I set my watch to bus and train departures and arrivals, public transportation is so good we don’t need a car’. From a group of Brits’, “Say the train is not here yet, my watch is off by two minutes here it comes now. From a Dutch tourist, “how do they do it? Everything works all the time! It is the most beautiful clean place we have ever visited”. 

It is truly astounding, we traveled from Zűrich to Luzern then by boat on the lake of four cantons (Luzernersee) by train from Zurich Luftplatz to Luzern and from Davos to Zűrich, across the Alps to Italy and back, we had Swiss transport passes, which included ship, train, vernaculars, cable cars, that are all interconnected and were included. Coming back home we gave our baggage in at Klosters at the Rätschiban, they transferred it to the Swiss Federal Railway at Lanquart to Zűrich and then to the Zűrich subway to the airport and on to Tampa, we never once had to carry our baggage, they even gave us our airline boarding passes in Klosters. Being Swiss I would accept no less. But when we got home to Tampa it was back to confusion and mismanagement.

We could do better! But then we would have to display the desire to do better, something sadly missing in America of the 21^st century. When we arrived it was painfully obvious that the designers of the airport had made no consideration relating to the travelers, the walk from the airplane to Passport Control was over 5 minutes. America is the only nation that still requires filling out forms for travelers, however someone did not inform passport control that they had a new system of computer terminals that contained the same questions, so the forms which were no longer used were thrown away. The bathroom was filthy and there were no towels to wipe your hands. After passport control we went to get our bags, but they were not there, it was raining and the agreement between the baggage handers and the airport was that they would not handle baggage if it rained. We waited 45 minutes after a 10-hour air trip to get our bags. One of the transport trains to the main terminal was broken so we had to wait some time for transport. As there is no public transportation between Tampa and Parrish we had a rental car reserved and drove ourselves home. 

In retrospect America’s largest problem is infrastructure. It is fair to say that America is a very large nation and that available public transportation poses some very serious challenges. However Switzerland has more mountains than the entire 35 US eastern and central states combined, which also presents a complex and expensive challenge. The Swiss have approached this problem with both public as well as many private conveyances. The Rätschiban which is private is a narrow gage mountain train system which runs from Chur Switzerland to Tirano Italy in four hours it’s the worlds slowest express but it climbs to 6759 Ft. with gradients up to 7 deg. through 55 tunnels and 196 bridges, It was snowing in August on top of the Bernina pass, sunny and warm in Tirano with palm trees. This system is certainly challenging and was very expensive to build. 

In my opinion American public transportation is dismal because there is no central planning, no organizational structure, and no will to organize anything on an interstate plan. The closest we ever came was Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, which is now in serious disrepair. In order to have good infrastructure you need leadership that has vision for the future, something we have not had in 50 years. Instead of concentrating on our problems, we engage in unproductive and unnecessary foreign wars.                 

I was fascinated by the fact that in four weeks I saw the same police officer twice, he was actually checking if people had paid their parking fees at the public lot next to our house. I never saw another one! On busses and trains no one took tickets, its based on the honor system, but if you don’t pay and get caught it’s a $100 fine. Everyone owns guns and you can carry it anyplace you like, almost no one does, violent crime seems not to be a factor. Never saw a single sign don’t or not allowed, or keep off the grass, no ball playing, no skate boarding, no swimming etc. People are expected to act in civil manner, and apply common sense, if they don’t citizens will inform them to do so. In all our time we saw Swiss, French Italian, Austrian and German TV, outside of a 20 sec. spot on the Republican presidential debate there was no news of America, we are no longer considered that important in Europe. 

This inevitably leads me to the state of America today. The fact that Swiss are free and Americans are not free may come as a harsh criticism but it is factual. In fact we spoke with several tourists as well as Swiss and asked them if they would come to America. The same response was most frequent; no thanks we have enough government and regulations here, our last trip was a nightmare. We have as a nation been at war since 1775. From then to 2015 we have had 17 years of peace, and 249 years of war. We have 112 federal agencies created by FDR to restrict our individual freedoms. From 1968 to present day our legislators proposed 27 new gun control laws, from 1934 to today America has over 20,000 gun control laws, 99% of which are not enforced or are impossible to enforce. Our governments state and federal require that we have licenses to marry, carry, live, have a home, drive a car, fish, hunt, work, register our kids, license our dogs, register to vote (without an ID) and register for the draft. Then to top it off they infringe on our bank accounts, read our mail, store our e-mails, and listen in on our telephone conversations, demand our employers to surrender our employment records, force us to pay a tax on income, sales, property ownership, business, tolls, income and after all that, after we are dead, force our relatives and kids to be taxed again with death-duties. We have the highest corporate taxes in the world, and the worst written and enforced tax laws in the world. They built the largest in the world federal complex in Utah just to store information on us. If that’s freedom I don’t want it!

Beginning with 9-11 we have expanded our wars, mostly by false and misleading evidence produced by the Mossad. The wars in Iraq based on WMD misinformation, the war in Afghanistan with 140,000 troops to capture under 100 (CIA and NSA number) al Qaida members, the war in Libya that turned a government cooperating with the CIA against al Qaida over to al Qaida.  And then the war in Syria to oust the Assad family, which is sponsored by Israel to destabilize Syria, which has resulted in over one million Christian and Shias to become refugees. We won’t even address the criminal acts of NATO in the Balkans. So much for Hillary’s “Arab Spring.” All I can say is no more wars for Israel! Speaking of wars, how about the war on poverty? From its beginning in the LBJ (D) admin we spent over 15 trillion dollars and guess what, today we have the same percentage of people below the poverty level as we had then. The war on drugs has resulted in the world’s largest prison population at 3 million and larger drug sales than when we began. The war on terror, now there’s a real winner, over 6000 dead American soldiers thousands maimed for life, and we are losing. What can be said of ISIL, ISIS, or it’s real name The Islamic State (The Caliphate) created through the sheer stupidity of Obama and Hillary Clinton.  

The situation in Europe has changed radically from the time I emigrated. In 1952 America was number one! Today we are not even in the top 25. Most Europeans despise our foreign policy, think that our diplomats are college boys or in the case of ambassadors political hacks. Something I completely agree with, appointing ambassadors based on campaign contributions is far beyond stupid. Our legislators are subject of laughter, and considered a new clown class. What was in the 50’s considered, as the best place in the world has become nothing more than a place for the third world to dump their insane, criminals, and bottom of the rung citizens. We now have over 40,000 illegal immigrant felons that the department of justice cannot or refuses to locate and between 18 and 24 million illegal immigrants that no government agency is able to find, or even makes an effort to find. Our southern border is and has been open for the last 30 years and no president has had the palle’s to end that since Eisenhower deported over a million wetbacks. In the mean time the TSA insults, inspects, x-rays, and harasses mostly American citizens in a pretense to make us safe. (They have not caught a single terrorist in 12 years)  Am I too harsh? Hell no, we are in very serious trouble and had better employ ourselves to solving our problems before they completely overwhelm us. 

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