Can't We Look At the Big Picture?

The front page of the Virginia Department of Health's web page says:

OPIOID ADDICTION IN VIRGINIA

Learn More

You can find information there about how this issue has been declared a public health crisis (November 2016). New rules are in place that now keep primary care physicians from managing their patients' chronic pain and instead they will have to send them to a pain specialist.

I feel for anyone who loses a loved one for any reason. But opioids are not the only reason people die. People die from gun shots, too. More people die from gunshots, actually, than from opioid overdose.

Many stories I am reading indicate that people with chronic pain issues are being caught up in this government effort to crack down on opioid drug use. However, from what I have read much of the problem is coming from heroin addicts and people using synthetic opioids brought illegally into the state, not people who are receiving prescription medication from their doctors.

Apparently the government is not making this distinction even though their own reports indicate this to be so:

“As we see the nature of drug addiction shift, from prescription opioids to heroin and synthetic fentanyl, we must be vigilant and ready to respond quickly,” said Secretary of Health and Human Resources Dr. Bill Hazel in a news release from the Virginia Governor's Office.

Even the White House thinks the problem is not with prescription drugs - "In a Wednesday press briefing . . . the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, blamed the crisis on "cheap heroin" flooding the market . . ."

So the opioid drug addiction and overdose problem is really . . . what? Prescription drugs or not?

This article from the People's Pharmacy explains how chronic pain sufferers have been caught up in this opioid crack down. "Many patients suffering long-term severe pain are having a hard time getting relief. We have heard from hundreds of people who never abused opioids or increased their dose," The Peoples' Pharmacy writes. The article then lists numerous stories from folks who feel they are now suffering because the actions of others have made it harder for them to receive the medication they need to live a better life.

Here is a chart from the Virginia Department of Health on Opioid Deaths. According to this information, 801 people died in the state in 2015 from opioid overdose.

Here is a chart that lists the number of gun deaths in the state of Virginia, current as of 2014. According to this information, there were 889 gun deaths here compared to 733 opioid deaths that same year.

As you can see, more people die from gun shot wounds than from overdosing on opioids.

However, there is little discussion (practically nothing) on the Virginia Department of Health's website about guns at all.

In fact, in their list of "health concerns" from A-Z, there isn't a mention of firearm safety or guns.

There is stuff on nuclear power plant accidents, fish consumption, and radon. I wonder how much any of us worries about nuclear power plant accidents. I know they don't cross my mind at all.

In the search box, I finally pulled up a .pdf on firearms, apparently last updated 11/10.

It says this on the .pdf -

I don't know if overdose and poisonings are the same thing in the eyes of the VDH.

Here's the whole .pdf, which I snagged as .jpg before it disappears -

I know there is a second amendment argument in the U.S. Constitution about gun right ownership, but I don't see how we can look at one thing that kills people when a similar amount of people - more, even - are dying from something else.

Isn't that like pointing to a pigeon while denying that blue jays exist?

Personally, I do not know anyone who has died from an opioid overdose, or at least I am not aware of it. My husband who is in emergency services sees it and he says overdoses do seem to be occurring more frequently but he says it is due to heroin, not prescription pain killers. Perhaps if there was not a drug available to "bring back" those who overdose, the number of deaths would be significantly higher.
 
But his squads also run many gunshot wound calls, most of which never make the news. Those folks are also saved by medical intervention, so feasibly gun death numbers would be higher, too, if our medical heroes didn't have so much expertise at fixing up holes in people.

While I know no overdose victims, I know people who have been affected by gun violence. My friend's son was dating one of the victims killed at Virginia Tech in April 2007. He was shaken to the core. One of my husband's firefighters, long ago, killed himself - he was a nice guy and his wife and I had a lot in common. That shook me to the core.

A very long time ago, one of my father's friends accidentally shot himself in the leg during a poker game. I had nightmares about it for years. I sometimes still do.

About 18 months ago, I was watching TV when two local news reporters were shot live on the air. I am friends with some of the staff of that TV station, and they will never be the same. I'm not sure I will be, either. As a print news reporter myself, it certainly has left me thinking twice about whether or not I want to be out in the public, open and available, a target to anyone.

Why are we emphasizing one cause of death and ignoring another? Shouldn't we try to combat all of them in some fashion (including vehicle deaths, which I know someone will bring up, and heart attacks, etc.) 

Let's follow the money to see who gains from this particular war on drugs, because in the USA it's always about the money. Pharmaceutical companies. Here's an article dated 3/29/17 that says Big Pharma is really behind this problem, the result of a concentrated marketing program.

An article in the same publication notes that the remedy to an overdose, introduced in 2002, "has generated $1-2 billion a year in revenues, first for its initial British manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser, and the Richmond, Virginia-based company that it spun off two years ago, Indivior."

That sounds like a good reason to sell one drug so you can sell another drug to fix the first drug, doesn't it? Billions of dollars.

The article also claims the remedy is as addictive as the drug it is saving the person from. So more sales.

The pain doctors will have more patients. They are specialists so many patients' co-pays for insurance will increase. (In my case, my co-pay would increase from $30 to see my primary care physician to $50 to see a specialist of any kind, as an example.)

Fighting drug wars in America has always been a losing proposition. From LSD to marijuana to cocaine, efforts to remove drugs from communities have only enriched drug smugglers and criminal organizations.

Wars on drugs don't work.

With Republicans in control of the federal government and many states, gun laws are off the table. The Republicans don't even mind if you're mentally ill and you own a gun.

These are not separate issues. These are one and the same. Both of these issues are about people dying and they are about money. Neither is about your right to live or my right to live, because the people who make the rules really don't give a crap about that.

They just care about their big donors, and unless your name is Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, that isn't you.

We already have gun laws. You can't legally own an automatic rifle, or a Sherman tank. You can't legally own a rocket launcher. I don't want you to not have a gun if you want one. I am a crackerjack shot with a .22 rifle.

But stiffer background checks might save a life, just as making it hard for Grandma to get her pain killers might save a life. So why is Grandma suffering while Joe Gunslinger isn't even having to wait more than 20 minutes to pick up his new firearm?

I could not find a chart that compared opioid overdoses to firearms for Virginia. I did find one for Colorado that I want to share with you. It is from the Colorado Department of Health (apparently they do keep track of gun deaths there.)

 

 

Personally, I think this chart really says all that needs to be said. We're chasing after farts and rainbows, people.

 

Somebody, please, stop and think about what is really going on here. FOLLOW THE MONEY. And always remember that your life really doesn't matter to anyone but you, no matter how smooth the huckster talks. Your life sure as hell doesn't matter to anybody in Washington DC or to anyone who runs a drug company. They just want whatever money you have left.

 

This issue matters to me. It is personal. I know people who are affected by this new "war on drug" episode. They are hurting and will hurt more.

 

Maybe the government is hoping grandmas and grandpas will shoot themselves when the pain becomes more than they can stand.

 

Thursday Thirteen

In the year 2018
what was good was now ugly, not clean
with the rules all sent out the door
the middle class all became poor.

In the year 2019
All was brown, nothing was green.
The streams ran brown with dirt and slime.
And no one called it a crime.

In the year 2020
America was no longer the land o' plenty
Nothing there unless you were the 1 percent
Most folks couldn't pay their rent.

In the year 2021
No more elections, Democracy was done.
They tore down the Statue of Liberty
Because the copper was worth money.

In the year 2022
The people cried out, what can we do?
No one heard their simple pleas
So they turned to anarchy.

In the year 2023
While the rest of the world feel to its knees
American bombs made the sky sing
The guy in charge named himself king.

In the year 2024
Europe decided it wouldn't take any more.
Their forces gathered one by one
To teach America that it was done.

In the year 2025
The old king fell over and died.
His sons and his daughter too
Took over so they could rule.

In the year 2027
All the religions preached about heaven
said this time was the judgement day
so we should all fall on our knees and pray.

In the year 2028
Spite and malice, and lots of hate
were the things that people felt
as all the ice caps were lost to melt.

In the year 2030
With the streams and air both too dirty
people dying in the streets in pain
their skin burned up by acid rain.

Now it has been 13 years
In that time humanity disappeared
We sat and watched while the world was destroyed
by the corporate good ol' boys.

They died too with their money in hand
It couldn't save them from a polluted land.
But now the Earth, free of humanity
Will make herself green and clean.

Woe woe.


With much apologies to "In the Year 2525" is a 1969 hit song by the American pop-rock duo of Dennis Zager and Rick Evans. I wrote this in 10 minutes (this morning!) whilst under the spell of a mild fever because I have some kind of respiratory thing and this is part of my feverish visions.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 493rd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Cardinal in the Green Grass

Mr. Bluebird on My Fence Post

Sunday Stealing: The Kathy Aay Questions

Sunday Stealing: The Kathy Aay Questions

1. What is the meaning of your blog’s name?

A. Blue - my favorite color. Country - where I live. Magic - I love the idea of magic and believe that life can be magical. If you look out of the corner of your eye you will sometimes see that a leprechaun in watching you.

2. Why did you start your blogging?

A. I initially started blogging in 2003 as a reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which I opposed on the grounds that the terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. As a news reporter in a very red area I couldn't speak out about it and maintain my objectivity, so I needed some other way to express my frustration. I got it out of my system and then switched over to AOl Journals. I turned that into a creative outlet because writing stories about local government was making me weary. After AOL decided to close its journal product, this blog came about.

3. What’s your usual bedtime?

A. Anywhere from 9:30 to midnight.

4. Are you lazy?

A. I don't think so, but I do think that being unwell has made me less enthusiastic about doing things than I once was. I don't think it's laziness so much as being zapped of energy by pain and medication.

5. Do you miss anyone right now?

A. Not at the moment, no.

6. How would you describe your fashion sense?

A. Terrible.

7. What are your nicknames?

A. My husband calls me Baby, Pookie, and Sweetie Pie. I also answer to "Hey, you!"
 
8. Are you a patient person?

A. Generally speaking. It depends on the situation and who is involved.

9. Are you tight-fisted or frivolous?

A. Tight-fisted.

10. What magazines do you read?

A. Reader's Digest and O! in print form. I sometimes pick up Progressive Farmer and Beef Today flip through them. I read the New York Times online and the local daily in print form every day, and the weekly paper in print form when it comes out. I also read articles from The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Slate, Salon, Vox, and whatever else of interest crosses my path.
 
11. Are you stubborn?

A. I can be. But not as stubborn as my husband.

12. When is your birthday?

A. I am a Gemini girl.

13. What book are you currently reading?

A. Hold Still, by Sally Mann. It's an autobiography of a famous photographer who went to same college I did.

14. What phone do you have?

A. I have a flip phone. It's a Nokia. I have had it for about five years, maybe longer.

15. Do you have any pets?

A. We have about 45 cows (most have calves) and two bulls. They are not exactly pets but they come running when they hear the tractor start up.

16. Do you have siblings?

A. I have a brother who is three years younger than I am.

17. Any children or grandchildren?

A. None of the above. I have a niece and four nephews, though.

18. What do you order at Starbucks?

A. I don't go to Starbucks. There isn't one nearby.

19. What did you do for your last birthday?

A. I was sick last year on my birthday. I spent the morning at the doctor's office and the rest of the day in bed.

20. What’s your occupation?

A. I am currently the bookkeeper and chief bottle washer for our farm and my husband's septic tank installation business. I am a freelance writer by trade. I did that for 30 years, mostly writing for newspapers and local magazines, and made a decent living at it until the recession. After that the jobs dwindled - our area had a glut of laid-off newspaper people - and then I became ill. I might go back to writing someday. Or not. I have also worked at other jobs, including for lawyers, in retail, and in industry. I had planned to become an adjunct instructor at the community college and had just been hired to do that when I became sick. I taught two classes and then was waylaid by illness.

I consider myself a jack-of-all-trades (master of none) because I have many interests, although lately I have heard people like me called "scanners" or "curiousity seekers" or "multipotentialite."

21. Do you live in the country or the city?

A. Thank God, I'm a country girl.
 

Women With Swords

Saturday 9: Heat of the Moment

Saturday 9: The Heat of the Moment (1982)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) What's something you did or said "in the heat of the moment?"

A. Quit a job. Actually, I stood up for myself and that led to my loss of a job. I was working for a two-lawyer firm, with another woman as a second (and senior) secretary. When I first went to work there, the drinks in the fridge were free. Then I was told I had to pay $0.50 for drinks (which were Sam's Club brand). So I started bringing in my own Diet Cokes. They kept disappearing. I knew one of the lawyers was drinking them because I saw the cans in his trash. Finally I marked one of the cans and when he came into my office with it in his hand, I pointed it out and asked for my $0.50 for the drink. He got very angry (though he handed me two quarters) and about two weeks later he "let me go" but gave no reason. He fought me on my unemployment but the state said he owed it to me since he had no real reasons for asking me to leave, so I collected it. Later, I found out that he and the other woman were having an affair; I am fairly sure that is the *real* reason I was asked to leave, because I was on the verge of figuring that out.

I'm not sure that's "heat of the moment" although I remember being angry when I saw for sure that he had my soda and was the one stealing from me. Jerk.

2) Asia's founder and bass player, John Wetton, passed away in January. One of his bandmates remembered him as a reliable performer who made everyone around him look better. Do you enjoy being the center of attention? Or would you, like Mr. Wetton, prefer to play a supporting role?

A. I would prefer the supporting role. The great thing about being a news reporter was I was there but invisible, participating but not. Seems like that would be a supporting role kind of thing.

3) Asia is a British band who played their first US concert at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. The nearest major city -- Ottawa, Canada -- is a 90-minute drive from Pottsdam. When you were last in the car for an hour or more? Where were you going?

A. We went to Rocky Mount, VA to hear Tommy Emmanuel play guitar at the Harvester Performance Center.

4) The song refers to disco hot spots, which apparently, by 1982, no one wanted to go to anymore. Let's make that negative into a positive. Describe your perfect night out with friends. Where would you go?

A. To see a fantasy movie and to the book store.

5) In 1982, the year this song was popular, someone laced bottles of Tylenol with cyanide. That's why we now have tamper-proof caps on many products. Have you used anything in a tamper-proof bottle yet today?

A. No. I have asked the pharmacist to remove the child-proof caps from my drug prescriptions. We have no children around here.

6) In 1982, Time Magazine's Person of the Year wasn't a person at all, it was "the computer." What do you use your computer for most often?

A. Writing, video games, reading (including Facebook, blogs, etc.), looking stuff up, and watching a live stream of a giraffe that refuses to have her baby, apparently.

7) 1982 also saw the premiere of The Weather Channel. Where do you learn the day's weather forecast? (Watching the local news on TV, checking your phone, looking out the window . . .)

A. I look out the window and check the local news station on the Internet.

8) In 1982, Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie, Conan the Barbarian, was a hit in theaters. When you settle down to watch a movie, is it usually a fantasy, like Conan? Or do you prefer another genre (action, comedy, adventure, romance, drama, classic . . .)

A. I like fantasies but will watch most anything except for those comedies that are full of poop jokes, farts, and young men objectifying women.

9) Random question: What is something you try to avoid?

A. Being uncomfortable.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

Sunrise This Morning

Thursday Thirteen

Here are 13 of my daily visitors:

They stand in the little hidden glen in front of my house all the time. As you can see, they frequently lie down. Sometimes all of them lie down at once, especially on dreary, foggy days.

They are curious animals and will come all the way to the house. I have pictures of them looking in the window; last spring one gave birth right outside my bedroom, beneath the spruce tree. They stand and watch as we drive by the car. They won't eat out of my hand but they do not run far when I go outside. As you can see, when I stepped out to take a picture many of them looked at me, but a few simply ignored me.

1. These are whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus).

2. When a whitetail deer is startled, it will raise its tail to expose the white underside. This signal serves as a warning for other deer, and this instinct gives the whitetail deer its name.

3. Whitetail deer are the smallest members of the North American deer family.

4. Male whitetails, or "bucks," range from 100 to 300 pounds, while females, or "does," range from 75 to 200 pounds.

5. Whitetail deer tend to be most active during dawn and at dusk. (Mine appear to be the exception to this rule - I see them at all hours of the day.)

6. They have relatively small home ranges, usually only a square mile or less.

7. Whitetails gather into same-sex groups, or herds, to graze throughout the summer.

8. The rut, when these animals mate, begins in early September. During this time bucks will fight each other to claim the right to mate with does in the area.

9. Whitetail deer can run at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, and swim at speeds of up to 13 miles per hour.

10. Whitetail deer have a very long stride when running, up to 25 feet.

11. Whitetail deer have a diverse diet, and have been known to eat over 600 different plants. They love to eat acorns, grasses, leaves, crops like soybeans and corn, berries, twigs, fungi, fruit, and nuts. They also eat roses, including the part with the thorns, as I have seen for myself.

12. Whitetail deer have a four chambered stomach, which allows them to digest extremely tough vegetation. They will eat quickly without chewing while feeding, and later they will cough their food up and chew it. (That is kind of gross.)

13. The whitetail's coat will change with the seasons, from reddish brown in the spring and summer when vegetation is growing to grayish brown in the winter. This helps the deer to stay camouflaged all year round. The change in color happens quickly, usually in 1 or 2 weeks.

Facts from this website.
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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 492nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

A Philosophical Budget

Last week when the current Republican administration unveiled the presidential wish list for a budget, many of my friends gasped and panicked.

Knowing that the thing has to go through Congress first, I held my tongue. I think, though, that an examination of this budget proposal shows a vision of America that is currently being led by a bunch of black-hearted buzzards who are cruel, at best, and evil and inhumane at worst.

If you like wars, blowing up people, and enriching those who are part of the military industrial complex, it's a great budget. I suppose millions of people think that is good stuff.

However, if you dislike stepping over the body of someone's grandmother while you're walking down Main Street USA, it's not such a good budget. If you like art, learning, museums, libraries and Amtrak, it's not a good budget.

If you're a human being who has a heart, it's not a good budget.

Why Should I Pay for Thus and Such Is Not the Right Question

Recently the Republican administration wanted to know why coal miners should pay for PBS (public television) or why a single mother with two kids should pay for something or another.

For the same reason that I have to pay for a F-15 fighter jet when I am a pacifist who staunchly disbelieves in wars and fighting.

You pay your taxes and your representatives put the money where they want it to go, that's why.

I mean, why should either I or the coal miner have to pay for the president to go to his "south White House" and play golf? Why should the coal miner lose his black lung benefits? Why should I have to worry about my health care so that the CEO of any Wall Street corporation can receive a tax break? Why is the entire country paying for the president's wife and son to live in New York when she should be in the White House?

Questions like these are stupid, and I could ask them all day. Phrasing something like that is just a way to throw off the real question, which is: do these people have any sense of morality and/or a conscience? Do they know what "empathy" is? Do they not care about other people at all? Did they not read that "do unto others" thing (Luke 6:31) in their guidebook, the Bible?

Did somebody take their teddy bear when they were in kindergarten and not give it back, and now they're having some kind of subliminal payback frenzy?

Do they not know what common decency is?

To Hell With Everything Else

So this is the budget proposal that says "government pays only for military and security" (and a wall) and to hell with everything else.

This is the budget that would let grandmas starve, and poor people rot in prisons because they can't afford a lawyer and the government would stop providing them with one.

This is the budget that would allow industries to pollute and people with lung-related illnesses to die because of dramatic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. I have asthma; watch me wheeze. 

This is the budget that would make all of our water look like it came from Flint, Michigan, because of the same reason.

This is the budget that would force rural people to drive 200 miles out of their way to reach an airport (it would no longer subsidize rural airports).

This is the budget that stops Amtrak in its tracks.

This is the budget that takes PBS and NPR out of the very rural areas that voted Republican in the last election. (I suspect those entities will survive in larger cities, like New York and San Francisco, but we will see. I think the rural stations will close.)

This is the budget that would offer you a miniscule voucher to send your kid to a private school, like that is going to actually cover even six weeks of education. You get to pay for the rest.

This is the budget that would allow housing discrimination to creep back into our communities, because funding to keep that at bay would be gone.

This is the budget that would let the wife beaters go on to be murderers, because the money to help domestic violence victims obtain protective orders would be wiped out.

This is a budget that says if you're a senior citizen and you've lost your job and need retraining, too damn bad, because the $434 million for that program would be gone.

This is the budget that would take the nation's national parks and turn them into oil drilling and fracking industrial zones. Say bye-bye to that little fuzzy blooming plant over there that might have been the cure for breast cancer, 'cause we will never know. Science has no place in this Republican administration.

This is the budget that would let people who can't afford heat freeze to death; you know, the one that would give us the headlines that say "Ten people in trailer park in up state New York found frozen." Or maybe it would say, "Two dozen elderly die from heat stroke in Birmingham, Alabama high-rise hotel" because the funding for helping low income folks with their energy bills will be gone. Apparently paying for heating and/or air conditioning assistance for poor people is not in the Bible.

This is the budget that would cut funding for Meals on Wheels (which will survive because thankfully much of its funding is from state and local monies, not federal, but again, the rural areas that voted for this Republican Administration will suffer the most from these cuts), because we can't have a 77-year-old man who lives alone (because his wife died and his Army-loving son was killed in Afghanistan) being visited by a young guy who will give him something healthy to eat and ensure he's not sprawled out dead on the kitchen floor.

That would be humane, to continue to pay for that kind of thing out of federal dollars. And the federal government is no longer in the business of humane (or humanity). It's just in the business of business.

And business, by definition, is heartless.

Eliminating the ARC

This is the budget that would eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission, which serves the heart of the president's base of support. This Commission, which I have written about innumerable times over the last 30 years, has helped decrease the number of high poverty counties (295 in 1960) to 107 today. Its programs increased graduation rates, reduced infant mortality, made potable water available to untold numbers of families, and helped create more then 2,000 miles of new highways. In my state alone, the ARC has helped folks increase household income, reduced poverty, and added indoor plumbing to places that otherwise would still be shitting into the creeks and sending their waste into the major waterways of the state. The ARC region, in case you don't know, is a 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia (including my county). Forty-two percent of the Region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population.

Here's a map of the region (I circled my county in yellow, for those who may not believe we're part of this loss of funding):

Community Block Grants

This is the budget that would eliminate Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which I have also written about multiple times over the last 30 years. I know New Castle in Craig County received one of these grants, because I was writing over there at the time. I think Fincastle's sidewalks were put in place in part with a CDBG, and I suspect but can't remember for sure that much of Buchanan's recovery from the 1985 flood came about because of a CDBG.  These grants are used for a multitude of things, from reinventing "blighted" areas to installing plumbing to revitalizing business districts. If people think this money is handed out willie-nillie, they are wrong. Communities go through extensive processes to receive these funds, and their projects have to be well composed and thought out before requests for funding are considered. It takes communities years to obtain these funds. They're not gifts, and regardless of the FAKE NEWS coming out of the Republican Administration, these grants do have measurable results. I've seen them myself.

Yes, I'm a Liberal

This budget proposal does not reflect what I want to see the United States be or become. I hope it is not who we are, because it is a callous document.

I want museums, libraries, parks, and streets. I don't ride on Amtrak but I want to see it continue. I want poor people to receive the help they need, those who need to work receive the education they require in this new world of technology, and all of the other stuff that apparently the black-hearted buzzards in Washington, D.C. have no respect or regard for.

The other day during a phone conversation I was informed with every other sentence that I am a Democrat. I'm really more of a social liberal, but whatever. The word "democrat" was hurled at me as if it were some kind of taunt or insult. This same person (who is a Republican) was unhappy because someone could go into his establishment and sue him if they touched a hot water heater and there was a sign up that said "don't touch."

Hey, that's the free market, Mr. Republican. If there's a lawyer out there who will take the case to take your money, that's the way it is. If you want regulations to stop that kind of thing, then move on over to my side. Otherwise, pay your insurance premiums, which will go unchecked and keep rising. That's the free market capitalism that you love so much.

He also noted that he didn't have to worry about health care because he was on Medicare. Republicans opposed Medicare (and Medicaid) in the 1960s when it began and are doing their best to defund Medicaid now and Medicare is in their sights. So welcome to my side, Mr. Republican. You're enjoying the fruits of my bleeding heart and that of those who came before me. How sad that you would deny that same security to your own children and grandchildren.

People who deride me for being liberal say that word like it's some kind of curse. It isn't. If I must be labeled, it's a label I embrace.

Jesus was a liberal, and that should say something about how one should act. Don't believe me? Of course you don't. But here you go:

·       In  Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus proclaims that how you treat the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and other "least of these," is how you treat Jesus himself.  And if you fail to help the "least of these," Jesus promises, he will send you to Hell.

 ·       The Old Testament is permeated with an overwhelming concern for the poor and for economic justice.

 ·       In the Old Testament Jubilee Year, slaves were released and land was returned to its original owners. That's called redistribution of wealth.

·       And last but not least, there are the famous words of Jesus in Mark 10:25: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

None of that says throw grandma under the bus and give taxpayer money to the rich guys who own Halliburton while we build nuclear weapons so we can blow up the world.

I favor that part of the U.S. Constitution that says "promote the general welfare." I take that to mean we as a society have been instructed to make sure that everyone has clean water, the roads don't have potholes, people who are sick receive the care they need, and that folks who find themselves in trouble have a safety net underneath them so they don't end up living in the streets. We're a wealthy and rich nation and there is absolutely no reason for the abject poverty that I have seen in my lifetime.

Promoting the general welfare doesn't ignore the other parts of the Preamble - establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense. But it is the part that I think is currently being ignored and the part certain people do not recognize or want to recognize. Justice is first, defense is last; domestic tranquility and general welfare are in the middle. But defense -  the one listed last and therefore perhaps the least important to the framers of this revered document  -  is the one that seems to be uppermost in the minds of the current Republican administration.

Most of us want the same things in life, I think. Freedom to move about, live where we want, work at the job we like. We want prosperity, however one defines that. For a select few, apparently, it is vast amounts of money; for others, like me, that means the ability to go the art museum and learn something. It's rather like success - you can define it a million ways and none of them are wrong. You may think I am not successful but I would tell you that as far as I am concerned, you are wrong. And you may think you are successful, and I might disagree. What does it matter if we both are happy?

I would hope that most of us would prefer that our fellow human beings do not suffer; that we want them and their children (as well as our own, of course), to be healthy; we want to live without fear of crime and other boogie men.

The argument is how to achieve these goals. We did the no-regulations-and-work-people-until-they-drop thing already, 100 years ago. We did that back during the beginnings of the Industrial Age and into the early 1900s, before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 in New York took the lives of 146 garment workers and showed us the error of allowing industry to go unchecked by regulations and government oversight.

Must we watch hundreds of people die again before we wake up and realize that industries do not police themselves? That churches cannot, or will not, serve and help all who are poor and needy? That $7 an hour doesn't feed, house and clothe a single individual, much less a family? 

It looks like it. I feel like we're moving backwards in time, heading into an era of the plague.

I hope the people of this land find their heart again, or there will be nothing here left to save.