I know all you young folks out there who might accidentally come across my blog know very little about the history of prosperity but most of the older folks have recollections of more prosperous times.  I can remember the 1950s where everything seemed to be going well  for many of us. We couldn’t build enough houses or cars to meet our needs.  Instead of our returning vets coming home to unemployment, jobs were being created at a vigorous rate. The 1960s was my decade for growth. Even though I was raised in the single parent household and my father was a milkman … Continue reading Prosperity and Taxes…My Recollections

Anxiety is tough, isn’t it? Not just for the people that have it, but for you – the people that stick with them – while they’re going through it. It’s emotionally taxing on both ends, it’s physically demanding at times, and of course mentally demanding most of the time. Plans have to be changed to accommodate the anxiety. Situations have to be avoided at times. Planning has to be just that bit more thorough. Emotional needs can change daily. It’s a lot to work through, and it can be hard to get in their head to understand on top of … Continue reading 13 Things to Remember If You Love A Person With Anxiety

In a half-dozen nations, tyrants who once ruled by fear and repression have been toppled, unleashing centuries-old sectarian rivalries and bloody struggles for power. Syria’s horrific civil war is spilling into Lebanon and threatening Jordan and Turkey, while Iraq has effectively devolved into three nations — one Shiite, one Sunni, one Kurdish. In the chaos, a particularly malignant form of radical Sunni Islam, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, has seized large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq…. Why is that rivalry raging now? It has fueled conflict and repression since the dawn of Islam in … Continue reading The grand Shiite-Sunni struggle

They aren’t actually anything new, just a variation on long-standing labor-organizing practices that have come back into prominence. “Micro union” is a recently coined term of art for bargaining units that encompass one category of workers at a business — the cosmetics workers at a Macy’s, for example — instead of the more traditional model of organizing all the workers for the business into one single bargaining unit. In 2011, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decided a group of certified nursing assistants at a nursing home constituted an appropriate bargaining unit in themselves, in a decision called Specialty Healthcare. … Continue reading Meet the new workers’ movement that is terrifying the wealthy and the powerful

This is no longer a trend – it is now a lifestyle that is too comfortable, for consumers of all ages, for it to go away anytime soon,” he said. Millennials’ tendency to rent instead of buy is also turning the retail industry upside down. SOURCE: Rebellious millennials are turning into a huge problem for retailers – Yahoo Finance. It appears from the above article that millennials (19 -35 years olds) are turning away from “fashion” and its annual almost dictated changes. They are giving up the high heels, yes especially the seven-inch ones, for more comfortable athletic shoes.  They insist … Continue reading Fashion is Out….

Around the country, special courts are set up for former military members who have been charged with crimes after returning to civilian life, and who may be struggling with PTSD. Judges, lawyers, probation officers and others work together to treat or punish each defendant. Special correspondent Spencer Michels reports on how the new approach can offer troubled veterans a path forward…. JUDGE JEFFREY ROSS: Our goal is to find an outcome which will both prevent recidivism, keep the public safe, keep the victims from being re-victimized, but also deal with the person’s background and the reasons he that he committed the … Continue reading Special courts…

Peanut allergies are one of the most common forms of food allergy among American children. And the last two decades have seen a dramatic rise in the number of cases. It’s estimated that today 2 percent of all children are allergic to peanuts, four times the number as recently as 1997. And it’s the leading cause of death from food allergies. For parents, of course, a key question, how to avoid the risk to their children. And now comes a new twist. A study published in “The New England Journal of Medicine,” it finds that exposing higher-risk infants to peanut … Continue reading Free-Range Kids??

Total U.S. defense spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) has increased so much over the past decade that it has reached levels not seen since World War II, when the United States had 12 million people under arms and waged wars on three continents. Moreover, the U.S. share of global military expenditures has jumped from about one-third to about one-half in this same period. Some of this growth can be attributed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the baseline or regular defense budget has also increased significantly. It has grown in real terms for an unprecedented 13 straight years, and … Continue reading About Our Defense Budgets… An Historic Perspective..

My wife is one of those people who if something doesn’t sound logical it must not be true. For example she absolutely refuses to believe in statistics of any form. I on the other hand have a very scientific nature. I am always trying to look at things for different angles. That is a basic difference between us and a very basic difference between many of us in the U.S.  It is nothing new.. Below is an excerpt from an article from National Geographic about this phenomenon. The world crackles with real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from … Continue reading The Age of Disbelief

I know there are many of U.S. citizens who have never known a time when our military spending did not dwarf everything else in our discretionary spending budgets. We just seem to be a nation that wants to be policemen of the world. We want to put our noses into every conflict we can find.  It doesn’t matter that in places like Iraq and Afghanistan they have been having the same battles for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. We just can’t seem to find a conflict that we think we stay out of or can’t solve with our military … Continue reading Will Our Gushing Military Spending Ever End?

It’s about time we let people take care of the problems in their own backyard. Continue reading It's About Time…

If you pay attention to such things it becomes very apparent that depending on where you live and how much income you have, and when you need it, primary healthcare varies widely across our nation.  The example below is specifically about worker’s compensation but is endemic across the healthcare spectrum. JUDY WOODRUFF: Howard Berkes, why are so many states moving to cut workers’ comp? HOWARD BERKES: Well, there are a couple of things that have occurred. One is, medical costs have increased so dramatically over the years. But the other thing is, we have had a couple of recessions in … Continue reading Federalized Healthcare…

Sometimes being creative is simply finding that right combination of things. That was the case with the above picture. At the center is a photo I took of my weeks old Chevy Sonic during our Colorado vacation. When I saw the rock cropping that were almost the same color as my sassy Sonic I had to immediately stop and take a picture of her. It would be a couple of years later before I found the frame to do the picture justice. I think it is a perfect creative combination.  It proudly hangs on my wall beside my desk. Continue reading The Right Combinations are Creative…

I am ashamed of the State of my birth and where I have lived most of my life. But, this isn’t the first time. Indiana for most of my life has been a very conservative red State who embarrasses me on a regular basis.  The Republicans now have total power and they are wielding it. The latest “religious freedom” law is just one example. It sounds like we are now going to have placards placed on business doors saying which potential customers are not allowed to enter their business.  It reminds me kind of like my youth when I saw … Continue reading I Am Ashamed Of My Native State…

Every city seems to have them but the most impressive display of Christmas light art I have ever found is in the Peoria Illinois “Festival of Art”. The creativity found there is awesome!  There are literally hundreds of different mammoth size display. The one shown above is a whale with Jonas’ boat inside.  It is probably 100 feet long.  If you live in the Midwest and need something to get you into the Christmas spirit plan a visit to Peoria this December. Continue reading Christmas Light Art…

In quick succession, the U.K., France, Italy, and Germany all agreed to become founding shareholders of the AIIB, a sign that they are eager to cozy up to Beijing and its $4 trillion in foreign reserves. Once upon a time, “the world was said to bow down before the mighty dollar. These days, even many of America’s closest allies have renminbi signs in their eyes.” This is an impressive “soft-power victory for China,” said the editors at Bloomberg View, and “Washington largely has itself to blame.” The U.S. has long called on China to take more of a role in … Continue reading And It Begins…A China Power Play….

In the 17th century, the French philosopher René Descartes came up with the “explanation for it all”: I think, therefore I am. Descartes is considered the Father of Modern Day philosophy but being a relative novice in this area I kind of put that label on Plato or Socrates. Philosophy is something that I have always been peripherally interested in but never delved much into.  I have to put that on my bucket list I guess. I bet very few people have it there. :)  But this is not the real topic of this post. It is more about the phrase … Continue reading I Think, Therefore I Am…

This post is kind of like an April Fools joke on myself. I think all of us have to one degree or another an alter ego.  That is a second self who is distinctively different from who we presently are day-to-day. Many of my personal journal posts are to my alter ego “Joe”.  He is my younger much more timid and less sure self. It took me many years to move out of that mode and to a degree I am still sometimes stuck there. Before I go any further lets look at the “official” definition of alter ego. Alter ego … Continue reading My Alter Ego

This is a digital reproduction of a picture I took almost forty years ago. I had a lot of energy in my youth and it took it all to hike up to the 12,000 feet level on top the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to the campsite. It was well worth the trip just to take this picture and include it in my life’s memories. And the view of the night sky was awesome, I have never seen it so full before or after. Continue reading From My Youth…

Peoria Illinois is a small city in the Midwest where I spent a long weekend a few Decembers ago. They have a December event called “The Festival of Lights”. It is well worth the visit.        Continue reading Peoria…

I am gathering some pretty impressive apps for making Doodles & Abstracts pictures. Here is the Rocky Mountains near Ouray Colorado just as I imagined it would look like… Continue reading Ouray Colorado – The Rocky Mountains

Sen. Rand Paul slammed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for hypocrisy on marijuana in an interview Wednesday with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric. Responding to recent revelations that Gov. Bush smoked pot during his teen years at Phillips Academy, Paul pointed out the flaws in Bush’s opposition to medical marijuana in his home state. Sen. Paul, who has hinted about his own wild college days, was quick to clarify that he did not fault Bush for having “made mistakes growing up.” Instead, he took issue with Bush’s inconsistent views on the drug. “If you’ve got MS in Florida, Jeb … Continue reading And Justice For All – Marijuana…

As the years go by I am convinced that the most abused thing in this world is the name of God. Everyday it seems that there is another person, group, religious sect that take God’s name in vain. The story below is about Jehovah’s Witnesses sect hiding, even from their own congregations, the child abusers among them.  Here are some of the words from the PBS Newshour report on this subject.  If you want to see the entire interview click on the source below: Believers are taught to renounce secular society because it’s controlled by Satan, and not to socialize … Continue reading Child Sex Abuse in the Church, Again….

I love taking sixty year old black and white thumb print size photos and restoring to a  much larger larger size.  That is what I did with this one of my wife (right) and her two siblings in the early 1950s.  She was quite a looker even at this young age. Continue reading Antiquity…

This is going to be one of those very philosophical posts so fasten your seatbelt. It is this idea of a fundamentally sinful humanity that inspires the harsh, punitive sentences of our criminal justice system — including capital punishment. It also provokes visions of merciless suffering in hell after death. We deserve severe punishment because we are free agents who knowingly choose to do what we ourselves know to be wrong. On the far side of a chasm stands a very different idea of humanity — one elaborated by Socrates and other characters in several Platonic dialogues. It holds that virtue is … Continue reading Paul or Plato??