Politics

The Doom Loop That’s Destroying Our Civilization — Take a hard look at our economies. What do you see? Here’s what I see: they’re trapped in an arms race they can’t win. What do I mean by that? Another month — another brutal round of interest rate rises. Don’t worry — this isn’t just going to be about…

The Crisis America Doesn’t Talk About, And Its Warning for the World — There are many ways that America’s a uniquely failed society, from shootings to rising authoritarianism. But of all these ways, one still flies under the radar much more than it should. The way America treats its elderly. It’s unconscionable. A scandal. A failure of grave — and terrible — proportions…

It’s still early but things look competitive — Happy Spring 2023 — it’s early election season for the City of Seattle. Think back to March 2019 if you can, what a hell of a four years it’s been since we last had one of these. The coming city council election promises to be competitive and high stakes, with…

Private profit isn’t a human right. Shelter is. — Aside from lending money at interest, for-profit land-lording (which is just lending property at interest) is the second-largest economic exploitation on planet Earth. And it’s destroying our civilization. The vast majority of humans alive today toil night and day creating real value for others, just to pay interest to rich…

Don’t mess with Texas doctors. Or do, if you don’t care about getting healthcare. — When I was young, my dad would talk about how great Texas was. He used to tell me that he was sad that I wouldn’t learn how to drive via a dune buggy on the farm and that I’ll never understand the beauty of Southern manners. Mom agreed wholeheartedly. Texas…

In Florida, What Happened During The Civil Rights Era, Stays In The Civil Rights Era — I have lived in Florida for 46 years and had not heard of East Florida State College (EFSC) before today. To be fair, I had heard of its predecessor, Brevard Community College, which changed its name in 2013 when it changed its curriculum to offer four-year degrees. They have a…

A breakdown of Florida’s HB 999 and SB 266, which seek to defund DEI initiatives and instead “promote Western civilization” — When you think of good public education, your first thought probably isn’t Florida. Florida school teachers are paid embarrassingly low (47th in the nation, as of 2020), the state government is trying its hardest to outlaw racial and LGBTQ+ topics in classrooms, and, well… we’ve just always been problematic. …

Five Levels of Ruin — And Where Our Civilization Ranks — One of the things that I find interesting these days, in a kind of sardonic way, is this. “Doom” has gone mainstream. You can read articles about it in the august pages of the New York Times. And those articles always have the same slant: “We’re not doomed!! Stop being…

It could send him off the deep end — There’s no way out and he knows it but his mind is so controlled by his narcissism that he can’t help seeing indictment as a PR opportunity. There are stories that he wants to be cuffed and appear in public that way. …