Message in a Bottle #4 – Sugar Daddy
The following was a letter submitted by an anonymous Pirate supporter using the pseudonym “Forward Thoughts”, sharing critiques of “Uncle Sam”. This article is apart of the project “Message in a Bottle”, allowing supporters of the US Pirate Party to submit editorial articles to the United States Pirate Party website.
Uncle Sam, the personification of the federal government, is supposed to be a beacon of democracy and good fortune towards the will of the people right here in the United States of America. However, he has gotten too big for his britches since the beginning. History highlighting this goes as far back as Uncle Sam exerting his power from the Whiskey Rebellion to recently using the Enemy Alien Act of 1787 to deport immigrant dissenters speaking out against the genocide happening in Palestine.
Every state relies on his charity to a certain extent, some more than others. How can we rely on our government to provide for its people when it directly meddles and persistently goes against the will of its people by starting wars and cutting funds to social programs, sometimes it creates on its own volition?
In a way, the American people receive assistance from the suits and ties of Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., that assistance comes in the form of government regulations more so than it comes from funding assistance. Guns, voting, criminal penalties, taxes, immigration, etc. are always the hot button issues every politician or candidate running for office has on their agenda.
“I want to be controlled harder by my government” said no one ever.
In order to curtail exerting pragmatic force against the will of the people, there’s supposed to be a system our founding fathers put in place called “checks and balances.” How this works is there’s the executive branch consisting of the presidency and cabinet members, Congress which consists of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the Supreme Court which consists of 9 justices.
However, what happens when all 3 branches reciprocate the same political ideology as one another? Who’s gonna stop these corrupt politicians from filling the coffers of themselves and of their allies (the oligarchy) they’re in cahoots with? Now we’re faced with a constitutional crisis where all 3 branches need to be severed like an infected limb.
Get this: Uncle Sam can exert his power over the economy on a whim. Right now President Trump is putting his hand up Uncle Sam as a puppet and he’s levying taxes on Chinese imports and other countries around the world. In retaliation, other countries he’s levied tariffs on are levying retaliatory tariffs against our imports into their countries. Consequently, prices on goods and services are rising. Stocks on the stock market are plummeting.
History is repeating itself. Remember back in US history class (well, hopefully you were taught this in US history class) about the Great Depression at the very end of the 1920s? Part of the reason why the economy went into a spiral was because of then Congress’s tariffs on foreign imports. Consumers no longer were able to afford products, therefore companies losing profits, especially those in the manufacturing industry, laid off workers.
Granted it wasn’t as if President Hoover bypassed Congress to make the tariffs happen, but my point still stands on how tariffs cause unintentional side effects to our everyday lives.
Lesson learned: tariffs backfire immensely on the economy.
Then President Nixon back in 1969 wanted to defund TV program PBS, Public Broadcasting Service. The nonprofit network was created to provide educational programming in a non-commercialized manner. It has brought us shows such as Sesame Street, Arthur, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, just to name a few.
Speaking of Mr. Rogers, he testified before Congress and managed to avert budget cuts for the nationally renowned TV station. Fast forward to present day 2025 — Republicans in Congress and President Trump are trying to cut funds for PBS. History is repeating itself yet again. Will we have a savior of PBS like we did back in 1969?
Lesson to be learned: PBS really is made possible by viewers like you.
Even at the state level, funding can be granted and cut based on the current majority party’s and governor’s ideology of that time. Pennhurst State School & Hospital in Spring City, PA is one of many examples of state government apathetic to the welfare of its people, especially a vulnerable population.
Opened in 1908 and closed in 1987, Pennhurst State School & Hospital was a product of an era of eugenics where those deemed unfit to reproduce in the Caucasian gene pool were euthanized or removed from society. Marginalized groups such as the epileptic and the mentally disabled were housed here, but soon grew to orphans, physically disabled, etc. Within a few years Pennhurst became overcrowded and conditions became deplorable.
In 1968, Bill Baldini did a 5-part segment on the conditions at Pennhurst exposing its wretched standard of living and abuse residents faced. There was a public outcry after the segment aired. Conditions seldomly improved from there on out until its closure in 1987. Fortunately, these residents were moved to boarding homes.
Have you ever heard of a Kirkbride psychiatric hospital? They’re long-term psychiatric hospitals designed in a batwing fashion with emphasis on natural light and air circulation. However, lack of funding and mismanagement had led to conditions in a handful of these facilities to be anything but cheery. In fact, it is what can easily be described as wicked.
Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in Trenton, NJ, under the direction of Dr. Henry Cotton, extracted organs and teeth from patients. In spite of high mortality rates and disprovable claims of cure rates, this persisted at the behest of Dr. Cotton during his tenure.
Philly (Philadelphia) State Hospital at Byberry opened in 1907. Unlike Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and others similar to Trenton, it was not made using the Kirkbride blueprints. This didn’t make the hospital any less susceptible to daunting conditions such as overcrowding, barbaric experiments, abuse, and neglect.
Props are in order to a conscientious objector named Charlie Lord, who between 1945 and 1946 was so appalled by the conditions he took note of that he covertly took photos and leaked them to the press. In these photos, raw sewage and naked men lined the hallways of Byberry.
Lesson to be learned: these residents were at the mercy of state politicians apathetic to their basic needs. Moreover and lastly, psychiatric hospitals such as the Kirkbride hospitals and disabled residential facilities such as Pennhurst are archaic and stunt personal psychiatric growth in patients.
Most states’ systems are designed to where property taxes fund our public schools. Back in the late 1800s, public schools were a shining gem of what America could be. Nowadays in many communities, our schools are nothing more than shadows of their former selves, meeting the minimum standards set by the state for funding.
Gone are the days of home economics and industrial shop classes. It’s all about standardized testing mandated by the state capital and even Uncle Sam, which is basically modern day phrenology. There’s educators and politicians who’ll justify this inane waste of paper by saying it measures how schools are doing with educating their students.
Standardized testing can be summed up in four words, it’s this: elite stay in control.
Lesson to be learned: standardized testing is a disease on our education system designed to punish lower socioeconomic schools and to keep those at the higher end of the socioeconomic.