See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Stanley P. Gershbein
Brooklyn Daily
And here we go again with America by the numbers!
According to Gallop, 36 percent of Americans say beer is their alcoholic beverage of choice. Wine is a very close second at 35 percent. While a white-wine spritzer is very feminine, more smart young women have switched to beer — not just beer, but beer in a long necked bottle when she’s at a club. That way, no man is able to slip a roofie into her drink.
How many movie theatres do you think there are in America? Well someone had the time to count and came up with a total of 5,762. At present, 87 percent of them have switched to digital projectors. Digital delivery is a lot cheaper for the studios but the price to upgrade to digital projectors is extremely expensive. We can look forward to smaller town independent theatres saying goodbye.
“One in six Americans will be the victim of identity theft this year,” said Barbara Tyson of Clearpoint Credit Counseling Solutions. “In the last 12 months, 9.93 million people have had identity theft committed against them.”
Once you become a victim of identity theft, I cannot tell you how much of a pain it is to clear things up. My roommate was a victim of identity theft about 12 years ago, and even though we had submitted all the necessary information to prove that their claims were wrong, she was still turned over to collection agency.
We were — and still are — being hounded by collection agencies with fast-talking agents telling us to pay up or else. For the first few years I sang “Sue me” to them. Now, if we don’t recognize the number on the caller identification, we just don’t pick up.
Award-winning reporter Mirta Ojito tells us about the thousands of “unaccompanied minors” who are caught attempting to enter the United States illegally. Three months ago, she told us that there will be 60,000 youngsters stopped at our borders this year. Other reporters are now upping that number to 90,000. We have to wonder how many more will not be stopped.
Last year, there were 8,496 denials of requests under the Freedom of Information rules. This was a record of some sort. Hey, wasn’t this supposed to be the most transparent administration in history?
Here’s another record: right now 92,594,000 Americans are not in the labor force. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that participation rate is equal to the 36 year low of 62.8 percent.
How about this: 26 percent of likely U.S. voters think the country is heading in the right direction. That’s a pretty low level of optimism. Meanwhile, 66 percent think the U.S. is heading down the wrong track. Apparently, the other seven percent don’t think.
From Slate.com: 96 percent of university chief academic officers say they are confident in their institutions ability to prepare students for success in the workplace. Only 11 percent of business leaders strongly agree. I am StanGershbein@Bellsouth.net asking, am I supposed to believe those that do the teaching or those that do the hiring?