THE BIPARTISAN DISMANTLING OF AMERICA
The process began in earnest with the words of President Ronald Reagan. His catchy - and destructively false - soundbite, “government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem,” initiated the dismantling of all we cherish as Americans. A catchy soundbite denigrated the sacred words of our Declaration of Independence stating that to secure the rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It denigrated all those who fought and died in the ...
WE MARCHED FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Stepping off the bus and heading to State Street will be a memory forever embedded in me. We were at least 75,000 strong. It’s not just about the rights of Women. It is about everyone out there that is marginalized in some way or form. It is about color, it is how we identify sexually. It is about HUMAN RIGHTS.
After hearing about the March in Washington D.C., the idea spread quickly to other major cities. When I heard Madison would be having a march, I knew I would be there. When I spoke of it, people wanted to carpool. There are only so many seats in my car! Two ...
WHO CARES?
“Who cares?” was House Speaker Paul Ryan’s reply to a question from Scott Pelley on a 60 Minutes segment after Trump tweeted lies about the election.
The question “Who cares?” must be applied to the impact the repeal of the Affordable Care Act by the president-elect and Republicans will have on the lives of our fellow Americans.
***“Who cares” about people who were denied coverage for pre-existing conditions?
My Mom was a small business owner in northern Wisconsin and was the hardest worker I have ever known. One of her young employees was ill for ...
OLD FASHIONED AMERICA AND THE “WELL-BEING” STATE
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper,
you're misinformed.” Mark Twain
This quip accurately describes the results of today's for-profit news media and cable TV. Americans are uniformed and misinformed on many topics. One example of misinformation is life in the “socialist” Scandinavian countries. The media portray them as welfare states that have nothing to teach us. These countries supposedly suffer from high taxes and oppressive bureaucracies that kill initiative, free enterprise, and personal freedom.
A new book, ...
STAND UP FOR SCIENCE, OUR DEMOCRACY, AND OUR PLANET
It was bad enough when we recently discovered our state DNR had stripped the words “climate change” from its website and added wording that led readers to believe there is controversy in the climate research world about its cause - the only real controversy is political, not scientific. A little later we learned that our Public Service Commission had done the same. Now, we find the new Trump administration erased climate change from the Environmental Protection Agency's website and has silenced EPA staff. Perhaps Orwell should have titled his book “2016” instead of ...
NORTH CENTRAL WISCONSIN ORGANIZING CO-OP
I have some exciting news to report. As of this afternoon, we officially surpassed the halfway point of the co-op drive! We currently have 126 pledges, and we have several high-profile events in the works in Oneida, Portage, Wood, Marathon, Lincoln, and Langlade Counties. I encourage all of you to check out the pledge page if you haven't. If you could add your pledge or start paying into the co-op at this time, that would be very helpful and greatly appreciated. Also, I would like to ask all of you that have pledged to commit to finding at least one more pledge. If all who ...
WEALTH AND MONEY PART XXVII: WAR, TAXES, BANKING AND THE LOOTING OF AMERICA
“Our roads and bridges are crumbling, our airports are out of date and the vast majority of our seaports are in danger of becoming obsolete. All the result of decades of neglect. None of this is really in dispute. Business leaders, labor unions, governors, mayors, congressmen and presidents have complained about a lack of funding for years, but aside from a onetime cash infusion from the stimulus program, nothing much has changed. There is still no consensus on how to solve the problem or where to get the massive amounts of money needed to fix it.” - - - CBS 60 Minutes ...
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Many people across our country are organizing to hold on to our democracy and to rebuild our country. Here are some examples.
Paula Lugar of Wisconsin writes:
“In 2011, I retired from 22 years of working in special education for a metropolitan Minnesota school district, ending my 37 year career as an occupational therapist employed to work with kids and families. I am taking a year to decide what comes next in my life after the August, 2016, death of my husband of 40 years. My exploration is informed by the core ethics of Permaculture: Care of People, Care of Earth ...
QUOTATIONS
“Politics isn’t left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom.” –Jim Hightower
“The revolution starts here. It is the beginning of much-needed change, change that will require sacrifice and people, change that will require many of us to make different choices in our lives. So my question to you today is, are you ready?”—Madonna, January 21st Women’s March in Washington D.C.
“The future is female.”—a sign carried by a marcher in Wausau, WI on January 21
“We all know that there is a connection between waste in one location and simultaneous starvation ...
THE URGENT NEED FOR SKEPTICISM
1953:
Few Americans remember the CIA orchestrated coup that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh won the election in 1951 and began implementing reforms to benefit the citizens of Iran. With the full support of his people, Mosaddegh nationalized the Iranian oil industry which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP - British Petroleum). For 40 years the corporation had plundered the oil wealth of Iran, leaving her people with next to nothing.
Naturally, U.S. based corpora...
