Browsing: Opinions

       For many, this passage describes the ancient Israelites’ journey. But for those of us who carry the blood memory of ships, chains, plantations, and rebellion—it resonates deeply with the African American experience.

       The recent Colombia County Board of Assessor’s 2025 property tax notice did little to convince the property owner they were not being gouged.

   Too many softies, that’s the problem. Too many people in America are still infected with the mind worms of lefty brain rot. Too many still think it’s good to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and care for the stranger, the immigrant, because those people might be the son of god in disguise and he may judge you based on how you treat those migrants and refugees. What bunk!

       On the Fourth of July, Donald Trump signed his “megabill.” The law boosts the dying fossil fuel industry with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It invites an additional 470 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2035 – that’s the equivalent annual emissions of more than 100 million gas-powered cars. And it aims to stop dead in its tracks the clean energy transition and the green manufacturing jobs boom the Inflation Reduction Act was already starting to create.

     Congressional passage of Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” provides the latest evidence that human greed, despite its primitive nature, remains alive and well.

     When Robert Oppenheimer, the civilian head of the program, informed his boss, the Nobel Prize winning physicist Arthur Compton, about the test’s apocalyptic risk, Compton was appalled. According to Toby Ord in The Precipice (2020), Compton decided, “Unless they came up with a firm and reliable conclusion that our atomic bombs could not explode the air or the sea, those bombs must never be made.” In his memoir Atomic Quest (1956) Compton recalled thinking, “Better to accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run a chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind!”

     I’m still in Appleton, Wisconsin as I write, awaiting my second cataract surgery, right eye, tomorrow. The first one went well. I’m not concerned about number two, at least not in and of itself. But I’ve felt myself plunging into a sense of deeper stress, feeling, with increasing regularity – as I stay here with my loving family – like a shrug of nobody.

   Who are these aliens living in America that the Republicans speak of with such disdain and contempt? Are they invaders from a foreign land? Are they creatures from another planet?   No. The aliens Republicans often vilify are human beings-men, women, and children-who may look, speak, or pray differently than what they consider “American.”

Being “Dad” to my daughter Amari, who was diagnosed with autism, changed everything. In the Black community, silence around disability comes at a cost. I’ve learned that fatherhood is leadership—and it’s time we speak up. Our kids need early support, inclusive policies, and visible, vocal fathers. Autism isn’t the tragedy—silence is.

       The signing of The Declaration of Independence had nothing to do with people of color as we were enslaved by some of those who signed the historic document.