Facets of Our Lives

I have been listening to interviews and reading articles about budget crisis. There is a lot of finger-pointing, but essentially, both parties are to blame if you look at the whole situation historically, especially over the last 30 years. So here's my analysis and thoughts on the whole thing. It is a foregone conclusion that the entire system of politics is broken. We are not governed by leaders but by financial interests on both sides of the aisle. Forget the so-called "hard" decisions, people can't or won't make the human decisions because humanity is out of the equation. First, the playing field is not level. Jobs are exported because the labor laws in other countries are weaker and salaries are cheaper. That's it. It's not rocket science. The answer is not dropping taxes in the US, because that just means these corporations pay less money here, not that they create more jobs. Why would they? If you can hire 10 Chinese for the cost of one Americ...

One of the reasons I try to cook for myself and my family from scratch comes from something I noted recently when shopping for groceries. In an effort to buy mass-produced items labeled as fat-free or low-fat, sugar-free or otherwise reduced in calories, reduced or salt-free, etc., I spent significantly more money than if I had purchased the regular version of things. This is not only tragic, but insulting to consumers. It's no wonder we have the problem with obesity and overall health that we do in the US. So my solution was to buy the raw ingredients. As my cardiologist told me, "if God didn't make it, you shouldn't eat it." Now this is not without its problems, either. Before the economy fell apart, I admit I didn't pay much attention -- I would just buy what I wanted when I wanted it. If I felt like making a particular type of vegetable that cost US$5 a pound, I didn't bat an eye. But the solution is not only simple, it can be beneficial. This ...

This post was inspired by a rather interesting exchange that took place on Facebook this week. It began with a link to a story with the headline, Texas Teacher Pension Needs 21% Return to Keep 80% Funded Ratio . As the person who posted this link correctly pointed out, there were errors made in how this was initially set up, but that the end result was going to be layoffs for teachers and that teachers were going to be denied their pensions. We have all seen the drama coming from Wisconsin regarding collective bargaining for unions, with specific emphasis there on teachers. It is happening in other states (with Republican governors, I might add), and worse, there are states accepting federal education monies and using these funds as an excuse to cut state-level education funding. And now, the Republican/conservative position is that education standards and funding should be handled by the states, rather than by federal funding and standards set by Washington. The logic being that l...