“Moderate Democrat” is a lie — they need to be called what they are: Republicans.
The New York Times recently asked if Americans will even notice if the 3.5 trillion dollar budget gets cleared. Their article also brought up some reasons why it might not pass, at least not unless it is further gutted. But the introspection didn’t go much further, and that’s the problem: introspection rarely does.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
But moderate Democrats favor a smaller package, with less government spending … Some Democrats are also uncomfortable with either raising the money needed to pay for the bill (through tax increases on the rich and corporations)
The 3.5 trillion dollar package…
Very glad to hear that you enjoyed the piece, and I loved reading your story and experiences. There is absolutely not enough support for students going through these degrees -- the systems that are in place to help students enter the post-college world and support themselves using their new skills is sorely lacking. What's more, as you illustrated, that's not a new issue! It strikes me that we fundamentally don't understand how to educate people in ways that support them fully, and this has been a longstanding problem. …
Students who do better in life post-college are more likely to support that college.
The current model of education in our society presents many arbitrary roadblocks on the highway of self-betterment. I’ve long argued that education at all levels should be completely free — all resources subsidized by the society as a whole, for the betterment of society as a whole. But how might current education systems might alter their operations in order to present more options to their students? What sort of changes can be made to practical ends within the terrible system we currently have?
Let’s teach students a trade.
My undergraduate college was from a little private liberal arts institution devoted…
How our everyday stories create our social reality, and how changing them can make the world better.
“The first object of human association is the improvement of their condition.” — Thomas Jefferson: Declaration and Protest of Virginia, 1825.
Once upon a time there was a grand experiment to see if a country by the people, for the people, could survive the tests of time and never perish from the earth. Or so the story goes.
Myth has purpose and myth has power. The myth of an exceptional America tells us that the United States exists to uphold the common good and promote democracy around the globe. This is a deeply-embedded story that many people tell themselves, and…
Elizabeth Warren and Robert Menendez paved the way for $50,000 student loan debt forgiveness, but the fight must not stop there.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren have been on a crusade since President Biden entered the office to cut the grizzly student loan debt in the United States by about half its current number. This is a big deal, since the country is bogged down with nearly two trillion dollars of student debt, and making loan payments has saddled most of the United States’ youthful population with a crippling burden that not only ruins hopes for health, safety, and a happy family but also innately damages the economic ecosystem of the entire country. …
For all the criticisms I can levy, it’s still a worthwhile film for a fun evening in.
In The Tomorrow War, we have Chris Pratt doing his usual superb job acting in a lovable role: dad of the hour struggling to follow his passion for science in a job market that won’t support him. Despite his many years of military service, he just doesn’t have the private sector corporate experience that the big labs want, and when we first encounter him he’s just experiencing yet another rejection.
This pretty clearly sets up one of the film’s main themes: the failure of society to reintegrate the soldiers it sends to war. …
Space exploration matters and it should be publicly funded.
On the eleventh of July, 2021, Sir Richard Branson lived his dream. Ever since looking up at the Moon with his father in the 60s, when humanity first traveled to our nearest orbital body, Richard dreamed of going to space himself one day. His career as an entrepreneur would make that dream a reality, the heights of his imagination fueled by his billionaire’s bank account. Branson wanting to go to space isn’t a bad thing, nor is it wrong for anyone to look up, starry-eyed, and strive to reach the heavens. …
The Tragic Thing About Vaccines… is that they work.
No, seriously. I know it’s a bit in-vogue throughout the deeper internet sphere to spin theories about the dark side of vaccine use, but this theorizing only ever serves to create barriers for the communities that need vaccinations the most: the poor, under-represented, and often neglected populations in communities across the world.
The only dark side to vaccines lies within the profit motive that can lead to them being expensive or proprietary, when they should be produced as services for the common good.
How do you get sick?
Stargirl tries to be a modern Superhero-themed Buffy… but where does it succeed in being itself?
I love superhero stuff, I really do. I’ve seen the classics, from silly weird things like Greatest American Hero to hallmarks of the new wave like Smallville. I’m also a huge fan of shows that buck the modern trend toward “doom and gloom melodrama”. Wandavision managed to offer something new: great writing, incredible acting, and enough mystery mixed with fun to be something special. I was less enthused with the The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which didn’t quite manage to offer anything new.
Then I encountered Stargirl, a silly little CW series I discovered on HBO that at least…
Self-betterment and the power of failure.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
-Samuel Beckett
Failure. Failure is a word that haunts so many people, a word that conjures images of the impending doom to which we all are borne. And yet failure, while a watchword, a watchtower word along the murky roads of life, has value, its true worth lies deeper like seeds beneath the ground.
From each failure comes a chance at success. From each success, a renewed chance to fail. The cyclical nature of what we are in this world is a repetition of the progressive and the…
