Saturday, July 30, 2011

I Believe

Before I begin with the laundry list of what I believe, I am going to explain my style of writing. I was taught by the US Army to use the KISS system. Keep It Simple Stupid. We were trained to use few words and sentences to get our point across rather than verbose writing where your points could be lost and misunderstood.

I believe that everyone should have access to universal health care.

I believe that the War on Terror should be stopped and instead use our resources to eradicate the causes of terror.

I believe the War on Drugs should be stopped and instead use our resources to eliminate the dependency on drugs.

I believe our prison industrial complex needs to be dismantled. Privatization of prisons must be stopped. We are imprisoning a greater percentage of our citizens than any other nation in the world and it is not working. Our whole criminal justice system needs to be reformed.

I believe that everyone should have access to shelter, food and other basic necessities of life.

I believe that the minimum wage should be a life sustaining wage and not one that leaves many citizens to a life below the poverty level.

I believe that any tax breaks given to the rich and the corporations should be in relation to how many jobs they have created for Americans to work.

I believe that the wages of the members of congress should not exceed the lowest paid constituent in their state/district. We need statesmen not politicians in positions of power.

I believe that our education system should be overhauled to insure that all children regardless of where they live receive the best education, that our teachers should receive wages commensurate with their job of ensuring that we have the best educated students in the world.

I believe that we must invest in our infrastructure.

I believe that we must invest in renewable/alternative energy sources.

These are my basic beliefs. I'm sure that others will be added.



The Working Poor and American Health Care

They work 40+ hours a week, make just enough to pay rent, utilities and put food on their tables when they are lucky. Their jobs do not provide health care and they make to much money to qualify for subsidized health care.

When they get sick, they go to work anyway because they do not get sick days. They work until they are so sick they can no longer go to work. They go to the emergency room. There they are treated so that they won’t die today and are given a prescription for medicine that they cannot afford to pay for.

They go back to work, having lost a day or two and hope they can pay rent, utilities and put food on their tables because of the lost work.

This is the great health care system our conservative Republican friends think is so great.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Rant

I haven't used blogger.com in several years.  I moved to MySpace after Hurricane Katrina and when it died I moved to FriendBurst.  I'm still at FriendBurst and am checking out Google+.  So far Google+ appears to be a glorified Twitter.  It's still in beta stage so I am sure it will be greatly improved once it is open to the general public.

I will probably blog on political and/or human rights and social justice issues.