Browsing: Opinions

     This action flies in the face of the U.S. government’s lengthy record of humanitarian assistance to people of other nations whose lives had been blighted by war, poverty, and illness. From the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-devastated Europe, to Senator George McGovern’s Food for Peace project to feed the hungry, to massive international public health campaigns to eradicate global diseases, U.S. aid programs have played an important role in alleviating human suffering around the world.

     Shouts and cheers, honking horns, people banging on drums. Oshkosh! No kings – at least not today. I’m with my sister and great nephew, attending the nearest national rally, about 20 miles south of their home in Appleton, Wisconsin. I’m up here with them because I’m getting cataract surgery (left eye tomorrow), but what the heck, Saturday is open. Let’s go to the No Kings rally.

     President Trump announced that the US had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. Then he messaged that “now is the time for peace.” No, it is time for war. No negotiating, just giving Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu precisely what he wanted–the bunker-busting bombs that the Israeli leader had been dreaming of being used. Trump now is co-owner of a war that can only end badly for all sides.

       On the surface, the case seems like a straightforward fraud investigation: two employees at the Bay County Tax Collector’s Office were allegedly issuing Florida driver’s licenses to individuals who didn’t meet legal requirements, bypassing required testing and documentation in exchange for financial compensation. According to BCSO, the fraudulent activity was captured on DMV surveillance, and many of those who received licenses were traveling from across Florida to take advantage of this illicit service.

   America, conceived in iniquity by white mortal men in 1776, remains grounded in a white supremacy ideology. The Founding Fathers recognized that within this new Country, they possessed a rare opportunity to experiment using Democracy to manage this government and its people. Despite the Founding Fathers faithful efforts of establishing separate branches of government to guard against a Monarch, they recognized that they could not account for man’s eroding integrity and America’s ensuing mortality.