Beware the Pitchforks!

"Beware, fellow Plutocrats, the Pitchforks are Coming!"

Many concerns have been raised over the unprecedented and monstrous inequality that now exists in America. The middle class is shrinking like never before, while wealth at the top is beyond all comprehension. This gap is an ever-increasing chasm that weakens our society, degrades our democratic ideals, and breeds resentment among those who are losing the battle to live the "American Dream." How much longer are we to tolerate this dangerous condition? Nick Hanauer is a voice of reason.

Here is another talk by Mr Hanauer given at TED and subsequently banned from its site. As Business Insider reported: As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs. The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject. National Journal reports today that TED officials decided not to put Hanauer's March 1 speech up online after deeming his remarks "too politically controversial" for the site...".

"Rich People Don't Create Jobs"

2017 is certain to bring much unrest and upheaval. Let us work to bring about the changes needed to return America to a political and economic field of equality, a country where respect, opportunity, and prosperity coexist. It is at our peril and impoverishment as a people that we ignore our personal responsibility to one another as citizens.

Verité Eligere

Cleaning Up Our Mess

We all need to become aware of our casual indifference toward the products we buy and use, then toss away—out of sight, out of mind. All products containing plastics are very worrisome. Only about 25% of plastics produced in the US is recycled. What happens to the rest? What happens to plastics produced elsewhere?

Plastics are forever. Watch this video to get a peek into what one organization is dealing with on just one island in Alaska. This is the tip of the proverbial iceberg...



Realize that plastics have become ubiquitous. From CBC News:

Perhaps best known are the ocean gyres — areas where large amounts of floating plastic have accumulated in easily visible "garbage patches." Of perhaps even more concern is research that has revealed less visible, but pervasive contamination by "microplastic" — tiny particles perhaps a millimetre in size or smaller. These are fragmented pieces of many different forms of plastic that have been found in beach sand in the most remote parts of the world, in sediments in the deep ocean and frozen into arctic ice. 

 Listen to "A New Silent Spring," a podcast interview with marine biologist Boris Worm on CBC's Quirks and Quarks. It may change the way you think about plastic, what happens to it, where it is, what damage it is doing.

Be aware.