I’m reading a book called “What We Leave Behind” by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay. It is depressing as hell. It explains how people are murdering the earth, which we absolutely are, but hasn’t offered any solutions thus far. I’m only part-way through the book and am hoping there will be some concrete suggestions that help me feel as though I can do something. Being left in a hopeless morass by a book is no…
With the debacle that our federal government has become (yes, the entire government appears to be a debacle at the moment), I’ve been trying to figure out how government can be improved down to its core. I put forth 9 ideas for revamping U.S. elections in October 2016. Now I’m rethinking one of those suggestions. One of the biggest problems (if not THE biggest problem) with our government at both the federal and state levels…
Healthcare costs have become insane since the Affordable Care Act became law. I don’t blame the law itself. I blame the fact that the law is based on a market system that allows health insurance companies to set rates and rake Americans over the coals in terms of premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. The system is broken because it is based on a false premise: That healthcare should be attached to profit and that insurance…
Nothing like a coup d’etat to get citizens engaged, eh? As our federal and state governments work hard – and rapidly – to strip the rights and societal protections of average Americans, we average Americans are stepping up, writing to legislators, marching, and making ourselves heard. Last week, I wrote postcards to my state legislators regarding a mute button that was installed at the State Capitol. This morning, I wrote to them about the Uniform…
When I was a kid, my mom used to laugh at me for yelling at the TV whenever I saw injustice playing out on shows. Yes, most of these shows were fiction, but I simply couldn’t stand the unfairness. One of my kindred spirits, a woman who could not tolerate injustice, is Eleanor Roosevelt. She died before I was born, but we share the same birthday, October 11, and I wrote a research paper on…