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Tom D Ford's comments:
on Food Access
I wonder how much of the diabetes epidemic is caused by the engineered GMO foods which have so much more sugars in them for sweetness?
If most of the nation is eating far more sugars in GMO foods and a higher percentage is getting diabetes, well, can the engineers, patent owners, growers, distributors and sellers of GMO foods be sued in class action suits for the diabetes that they caused?
And if not why not?
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Tsunami
lolo
He makes it up.
And he is doing what psychologists call "projecting" his own faults onto others.
His comment:
"But it does not stop Paranoid Schizoids from luxuriating."
Applies to himself.
I think he is relatively harmless.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Culture of Pimping
I have wondered how many girls went to LA because of that movie "Pretty Woman", with the romantic idea that they could end up marrying a millionaire.
Like there are two sides to that movie, the uplifting romantic side and the sex trade downside.
I worked in Las Vegas for a while building a movie theater and I counted some 170+ pages in the phonebook of "exotic dancers". I thought that was a lot of demand for dancers and it took me a while to realize what it really meant.
And I drove past some of those legal brothels in Nevada on my way down and back to LV and the brothels are some bleak looking places, usually just trailer houses.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Culture of Pimping
"In Scandinavia, fines are often based on a percentage of income."
I thought it was "percentage of wealth" but either way I think it is a good idea, at least in this case.
I've heard of huge fines for rich speeders and I haven't thought out whether that is a good idea or not.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Culture of Pimping
Considering that they exploit underaged girls, aren't pimps really sex offenders, a type of pedophiles, who ought to be registered as sex offenders and made to wear those GPS type ankle bracelets and tracked, and or taken out of society permanently just like any other dangerous sex offender?
Being a pedophile or enabling pedophiles, is apparently what they do, so why not treat them as that?
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Culture of Pimping
I have to admit that I have a very low regard for people who exploit humans as cheap-labor and a pimp sure has to be one of the lowest of those.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
Originally, the idea of Public Schools was to give kids a "liberal education" to help them become knowledgeable, educated, contributing, and participating citizens. But Conservatives have always attacked schools and demanded that they only teach the three "Rs", Readin', Ritin', and 'Rithmetic, leaving behind things like actual unrevised history, PE, civics, the arts, etc.
And so now we only get workers and consumers out of our schools and only a very few with a good education to be a knowledgeable and contributing US citizen.
It is the politics that has screwed up what teachers can teach, not the teachers who do the teaching.
Teachers do not have a vested interest in maintaining that arrangement at all and it is against what most of them went into the teaching profession for. Get conservatives off of the school boards and turn the teachers loose to do their jobs of educating American children.
We need to protect teachers and other Union workers from Conservatives, not the other way around.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
"The blame lies with the republican party and on wall street, not main street."
Exactly.
Conservative Republicans are attacking Unions to divert The American Peoples' attention away from what Conservative Republicans have done to us all. They are using the Unions as a "Red Herring", just like in mystery stories.
Grr!
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
Why don't people attack Corporations? Why not limit their power and scope of operations? They are groups of investers "collectively" doing business and with increasingly unlimited and De-Regulated power.
Giant Global Corporations have done far more financial harm to The American People than any few "less than perfect teachers" ever could.
Anybody remember "derivatives" and the great recession they did to us? They are still not regulated.
Let's get our priorities straight!
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
Yah but, the bankers collude as a group, AKA collectively.
So they are very similar.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
Conservative leaders have demanded and gotten pay raises for their wealthy in the form of tax cuts and now they are demanding that the workers give up their wages to pay for those tax cuts.
Conservative leaders are busy dividing the American People against each other and getting their base to attack their fellow american workers.
There is a lot wrong with this picture!
Whatever happened to the ideals of our Nations Founders, "United We stand, Divided We Fall"?
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
Teachers do continually train and update their skills and those are negotiated with the Unions. Quite often those "summer months off" that the public whines about are spent back in college updating their skills and knowledge.
So they are very much like trade Unions.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
I'll point out that the teachers are at work while this show is on and so cannot defend themselves.
Teachers are the most underpaid workers in our nation.
If you paid them for the value that they create in the form of educated and productive workers and managers and consequently job creators and so wealth creators, well, they really deserve to be at the top of any pay scales, right along with those overbonused bankers!
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
Yes it is a myth.
What people miss when they drive past a public works site and see a couple workers standing still is that there are a bunch of very expensive machines at work that every once in a while need the help of a few relatively inexpensive workers to do what the machine cannot.
Say you have a thousand dollars an hour worth of machines operating and you need a few shovels of dirt moved into just the right place that the machines cannot get to in order to complete the job. You could stop the thousand dollars of machines and turn them around and take the time to go back with them and redo that few shovels worth of work, at the cost of many hundreds of dollars or you could pay a few workers under a hundred bucks to shovel and keep the machines going at their most productive rates. Well, duh, you spend the money to save money!
And often, one stander is an engineer overseeing the work and one technical tester who has to take a test every so often to make sure the work conforms to contract. And those guys are there because some contractors have been dishonest in the past and so make all contractors need overseeing.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Wes Moore
Great questions, Roosevelters!
The kids really are alright!
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Wes Moore
Wes talks the east coast speed.
Tha contrast between that and the relatively laid back west coast speed of speech is very interesting. 30 Rock show has that same speed.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
view in context
on Wes Moore
I like that Wes addresses "context" and the limited choices that context provides.
I encourage people to look back over religion because that was used historically to enslave people, including the black people imported from Africa. Many black people still embrace the religion that enslaved their ancestors and without ralizing that it still mentally enslaves themselves!
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Wes Moore
I appreciate the talk about the need for education, but that is not the only thing. Business and government policies need to change also. For example, a lot of those protesters in Egypt were/are highly educated youth with degrees but no job prospects. Iranians too, and also in the other Middle East Nations facing revolts. Highly educated with no jobs!
Many years ago the black sister of a black friend of mine applied for a job at banks here in Bend without success. Thing is she had been an executive in one of those big New York City banks and so was probably more qualified than any banker in Bend. She would have been a real "get" because she wanted to live in Bend and was willing to take the pay cuts that required but Bend was still very racist and she could not get a job. Bend lost a very good opportunity to get a person who would have been a great asset to the Bend business community and our community in general.
Maybe that old saying is true that a generation has to die for the new generations to make progress.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Sealing the Cracks in Foster Care
dgmaldridge1 — Fri March 4th 9:56a.m.
Thanks for your replys.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Sealing the Cracks in Foster Care
Wouldn't you think that any conversation would be video-ed?
For the protection of everyone involved?
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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