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Letters to the Editor

Campaign Insurance

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It’s a campaign year and advertising’s already blitzing.  The candidates and their super pacs are spending millions trying to influence you and me.

So, our challenge will be to live in relative peace while these tea pot skirmishers whistle all around us. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to avoid their de-civilizing influence, since their campaigns require us to become more than passive observers.

I won’t minimize the danger. These peddlers are experienced professionals. They know which heartstrings yield maximum emotional response, and they know how to pull every single one of them. Their curious science of consent engineering leverages normal human cognitive facilities to cruelly manipulate belief. 

They could make me vote for a chicken if I let them in. You, too.

So, I’ve adopted a few tried-and-true defenses, I call them My Campaign Insurance, which I re-deploy every campaign season Slip over here for more ...

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Coffee, Tea or We?

I’ve been experiencing Deja Vu watching the rise of the Tea Party, the Coffee Klatchers, the so-called conservatives, and the much-vilified progressives. I could be living a hundred years ago without changing a single spot.

When the founding fathers penned our Constitution, they began simply but profoundly with “We the people.” This statement feels remarkably progressive. No one had seen anything like “we” associated with “the people.” Their aspiration seems clear. Slip over here for more ...

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Good For The Goose

When the United States entered The Great War, many captains of industry moved to DC, volunteering their services for a mere dollar per year. Most of these “dollar men” turned out to be worth every cent their government paid them.

Once behind Federal desks, these captains found little to do, for most had inherited their privileged position and maintained it by limiting wages and promoting equities. They knew little about production, considering fabrication to be work suitable only for common people. Slip over here for more ...

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State of the Union

The State of the Union

I hear lots of rumbling about how we, the people, should impeach President Bush. Now that he’s admitted to initiating this wiretap scheme, claiming that Congress granted him a right which it explicitly denied him and that he’s simply fulfilling a duty of his office, the Internet is filled with virtual pitchforks and burning torches. Voices clamoring for his head.
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