The Olympian published my newest op-ed. See this link: https://www.theolympian.com/opinion/op-ed/article235448132.html? Click to hide the ad so you can see my opening paragraph about public opinion polls.
The October 2019 episode of “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” takes a fresh look at some of our nation’s social and political issues – especially in light of religious faith. Many of the public policy issues that our nation is grappling with have been pushed hard from conservative Christian viewpoints, but those are NOT the only voices of Christianity. Moderate, liberal and progressive Christians have insights that differ greatly from the highly publicized views that have gained political power. Our October 2019 interview features three retired Christian ministers sharing faith-based insights and perspectives that are VERY DIFFERENT from those that have been […]
This non-profit org’s e-mail explains what’s been happening. Perhaps you already know. See this interesting news from Lewis County. I clicked the link in this sentence: The Daily Chronicle, like any good media outlet, published the email. See the Centralia newspaper’s article at this link: http://www.chronline.com/news/crystal-geyser-mistakenly-emails-chronicle-randle-bottling-project-likely-dead/article_cd562296-a434-11e9-85e8-03a953d811a6.html?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=70742fc1-ddac-4a06-b7c4-7e7199a7ca7c
Watch the 24-minute video I have linked below. It exposes “public-private partnerships” as harmful in many ways. Social problems are “monetized” by using public funding to let big businesses pretend to solve problems, but really the big businesses get rich at public expense – without actually solving the problems. Nationwide, BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES keep supporting these scams that value profits instead of people. This powerful video shows an example of the “public-private partnership” scam in Baltimore and the powerful grassroots organizing that fought back and opposed the gentrification. Here is the link: https://www.truthdig.com/videos/the-defining-scam-of-the-neoliberal-era/
If ordinary people around the world had political and economic democracy, we never would have allowed the climate crisis to get to this extreme emergency: • We would have paid attention to the science. • We would have sharply restricted big business and other economic powers. • We would have forced governments to take strong and timely action decades ago. The fact that the climate crisis exists now proves that the U.S. and the world are existentially suffering from a lack of political and economic democracy. The following article discusses this: The Climate Crisis Means the Wrong People Are Running […]
Historically the U.S. was created — and our Constitution’s First Amendment adopted — to protect us from any official religion. Nowadays, the Religious Right is pushing hard to make their version of Christianity into the U.S.’s official religion. That would overturn 230 years of U.S. principled separation between Church and State. And it would hurt many people’s human rights. But some people have said that the U.S. has — in effect — the truly dominant religion of Nationalism. Extreme nationalism corrupts many aspects of that nation’s society in many ways. It causes people to hurt people of other nations. The […]
Many of the problems in our nation and in our world worsened and persist because people have created a gap between “us” and “them.” “Real” Americans vs. immigrants, Christians vs. others, rich vs. poor, straights vs. LGBTQ persons, and so forth — all of these divisions are ways for privileged people to put themselves above people of lower status. In 2018 some Church leaders who were appalled by the Religious Right’s cruelties and abuses wrote a statement they called “Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis.” The document identifies six serious theological errors that the Religious […]
Voters in 2016 were angry at the status quo, and they wanted Bernie Sanders, but the institutional Democratic Party manipulated things in order to cram Hillary Clinton down our throats instead. Hillary thought the status quo was OK with just a little tinkering around the edges, and her “centrism” failed to inspire voters. Voters voted for a radical non-politician named Trump and hoped for the best. Now the institutional Democratic Party is repeating their same mistake by opposing the true progressives (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) and trying to push Joe Biden or another “centrist” down our throats. 2020 will […]
Trump and Republicans LIED when they said their December 2017 tax cuts for big business and extremely rich people would be good for the rest of us. INSTEAD, WE NEED TO REPEAL THAT — and RAISE TAXES on the very richest 0.2% of the population in order to help the 99.8% of us who are not extremely rich. On September 23, 2019, Americans for Tax Fairness (www.americansfortaxfairness.org) sent an e-mail urging us to urge our members of Congress to sign on and co-sponsor new legislation to promote economic justice. I am quoting some parts of their e-mail and summarizing some […]
A great many issues are important, but neither of the two big political parties is doing nearly enough to solve these problems. While voting has some value, the most progress in solving problems will occur when ordinary people organize nonviolently, strategically, and vigorously from the grassroots. The article I am attaching below fleshes this out briefly. For more information, see resources I’ve posted to this blog’s “Organizing” category. During 2019 The Olympian is publishing five op-eds that I am writing. The one at this link was published in the newspaper on Fri. Sept. 27, 2019: BOC — 2019.09.19 — FINAL […]
Even before the 2016 election many people were recognizing that Trump had serious psychological problems. Since then a growing number of psychologists and psychiatrists have been alerting us that Trump’s psychiatric problems have been getting more serious and now are a very serious threat to the U.S. and to the entire world. His utter incompetence has caused him to fail in many, many ways. When people fail to follow his reckless and ridiculous orders — and when people push back against his dictatorial behaviors — he feels personally “cornered” and his psychiatric problems worsen, so he escalates his dangerous behaviors. […]
The headline of the article I’m linking below asks, “Is Norway better off with socialism than the U.S. is with capitalism?” The article’s sub-head says: “The numbers show that the U.S. has wealth, but that wealth is collected in only a few hands. Norway has wealth, but it is spread more evenly.” Actually, the headline’s use of the word “socialism” somewhat overstates the case. Norway’s economy really is basically capitalist, but Norway has deliberately designed its government and its economy to serve the broad public rather than a rich elite. The article linked here includes stark contrasts between Norway and […]
Trump is relentlessly, repeatedly attacking TRUTH and attacking DEMOCRACY and other humane values in so many may ways that people are increasingly afraid that our constitutional government will be replaced by Trump’s dictatorship. Congress is not doing nearly enough to protect us. Trump has been stacking the courts with young, right-wing extremists who will continue imposing Trumpism upon us for decades into the future. Media ownership is concentrating in fewer hands, and those are increasingly right-wing, so now fewer Americans know what is really happening. A recent article was titled: “How Democracy Dies: Big Brother is Erasing the Public […]
Olympia’s monthly publication Works In Progress invited people to write articles for their October 2019 issue around the theme of “The Rest of the World.” I submitted the article linked below, and I think you will enjoy reading it too (whether or not they print it). Replace militarism with nonviolent foreign policy — based on Oct 2019 WIP article
For EVERY issue we work on, we need to COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY with various kinds of audiences. Sometimes this includes people who disagree with us — and sometimes people who want to attack or derail us. In order to make progress, we need to stand strong on OUR messages and not letting anyone hijack the conversation or distract the other listeners. This is true whether we’re talking about Universal Single-Payer health care, changing our economic system, protecting the climate, abolishing nuclear weapons, or any other issue. HERE IS A GOOD EXAMPLE: Universal Single-Payer health care (“Medicare for All”) would save […]
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