The average credit card interest rate right now is 14.4 percent. No wonder the letter I received yesterday trumpeted in big red letters, "Your APR has been reduced to 12.69%!!" Note the double exclamation marks. In this economic climate, it should be a single digit APR.

As if I would be so stupid as to acquire credit card debt at this time of my life and at a rate that high. Only a dire emergency would cause me to go into debt again. It was too hard and too stressful to climb out of that pit. Took me years to do it.

These days I use credit cards for two purposes only: one is the occasional purchase to keep the card alive (companies cancel cards which languish in dust and disuse); the other is for purchases where I want to have the purchase protection that comes with a card purchase and I pay it off before the next billing cycle.

Other than that, it's cash only. I suppose I'd have to use a credit card for car rental or airline tickets, thanks to the general TSA hysteria which has been embedded in 21st century America as a permanent fixture.

Have you counted up how many freedoms we've lost and how many more are threatened? Remember when you could go anywhere you wanted without showing an ID and without being scanned, patted down, or wanded?

People are controlled through fear. I live in a nice, quiet suburban neighborhood. People are afraid to let their children walk to school, even just a couple of blocks. After school, the children have monitored activites and supervised "play dates". Then they are driven back home and sequestered within its walls.

Security. Fear. Control.