I will not be around for the most disastrous consequences, so this will not affect me personally. I do not have children, but those who do and don't take this seriously are condemning them to a dystopian future in which billions of humans will die and countless species will go extinct.

Politics
Trump-Republican Trade Treachery
10/23/16
Trump is correct that NAFTA is a disaster. But he states a misleading fact in order to lie about who's primarily responsible. Don't be fooled; that's Republicans by far. Regardless of Trump's stated opposition to win votes, the Republican Party has been, and is, all in for the "trade" agreement betrayals of the U.S. economy and U.S. sovereignty. Those who tell you otherwise are lying. Those opposed to "trade" agreements like NAFTA and TPP should vote against Republicans. Democrats voted overwhelmingly against them and against the presidents of their own party.
The votes on NAFTA and TPP put Hillary Clinton in a tight spot. She can't admit that the Republican Party is the major support for these disastrous "trade" agreements. That's because both Bill Clinton and Obama colluded with Republicans against majority Democratic opposition to get NAFTA and TPP Fast Track approved.

Politics
Tax Expenditure Entitlements
3/22/17
Mick Mulvaney, Trump's Director of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget), says Republicans want more "compassion" for wealthy taxpayers instead of compassion for those who in poverty, homeless, and sick. The Republican mantra is that those are the "takers". Mulvaney said, "you have to have compassion for the folks who are paying" taxes.
This article documents that the U.S. has enormous "compassion" for the wealthy by letting them not pay much of what they'd otherwise pay in taxes. It reveals them to be the "takers" and that the "culture of dependency" is for the wealthy.
Much of what we're told about government spending, debt, and worker pay are lies. The problem, Republicans say, is "entitlements" like Social Security and Medicare that are going broke. The truth is that these programs are in surplus and have been paid for by those who receive them.
What's not in surplus is Discretionary Spending. That's because of tax cuts for the wealthy and enormous Tax Expenditures (Tax Breaks) that primarily go to the most wealthy. Tax Breaks for the top 20% are greater than Military Spending, which is over half of U.S. Discretionary Spending. One-sixth of all Tax Expenditures go to the top 1%: that's 2.7X SNAP benefits.
Therefore, the problem is obviously not food stamps or Meals on Wheels or NPR/PBS. The problem isn't too high taxes; it's Tax Breaks. Tax Loopholes so large that the Loopholes are Bigger than the Loop. We need "Tax Break Resistance", not "Tax Resistance".
People are not "Taxed Enough Already"; they're "Paid Too Damn Little" because compensation has been flat for about four decades because of policies that rig the U.S. economic system against those who work for a wage.

Politics
Colorado Springs is Doomed!



Politics
Global Warming Denial: A Case Study
11/14/15
The facts about a global-warming-denier meme that lies about what Gore has said and about the reality of the loss of ice at the Arctic ice cap. The dedication to what's factually incorrect is amazing.

Politics
Global Warming: An Inconvenient-to-Understand Truth
3/28/03
Global warming is a major problem that we must address. This is a draft of a commentary on the issue from a systems thinking perspective. The referenced paper from MIT explains the flawed nature of public understanding of the problem. A second commentary responds to a libertarian column denying there's a problem and explains why George Bush's "Clear Skies" program is more aptly titled, "Cloudy Skies.