“Abdominal discomfort or pain? Bloating? Constipation? It’s time to Talk to Your Doctor About IBS”
—Novartis Ad
Once upon a time, a rich and greedy captain of industry who headed one of the largest drug companies in the U.S. bemoaned the fact that he was forced to sell his drugs only to sick people, a very small share of the consumer market. What he yearned to do was to sell his potions to everyone, increasing the market for his drugs to infinity.
“Police used DNA info on genealogy website to track down Golden State Killer suspect” (CNN, 4/28/18). At first glance, a triumph for law enforcement. Not so fast. The method used to identify the suspect—DNA matching — raises troubling questions about a law enforcement agency getting way over its skis. It was not the suspect’s DNA that provided the clue to his identity but that of a relative. The DNA was culled from a genealogy database that didn’t (because it didn’t have to) inform the relative that his (or her) DNA might wind up as part of a law enforcement operation and then on a government database permanently.
Remember the halcyon days of 2009 as the echoes of “change we can believe in” and “yes we can” hadn’t yet succumbed to dashed hopes and dying dreams. America had cut the cord of centuries of racial bias and elected a black man president. Dreams of My Father, Obama’s opus, reinvigorated our belief in the myth of a chosen people.
“It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself, first,
as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time.
No nation is less fitted for this role. For two or more centuries America has
marched proudly in the van of human hatred…to your tents…
and world war with black and parti-colored mongrel beasts!”
—W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil, 1920
“I am 30 years old. I went to college to get a better job. But now I regret going. I originally owed $70,000, have been paying for nine years and now owe $157,000. I can barely afford to go to the dentist or doctor. If there’s an emergency, I have to rely on credit cards or retired parents. I am living at poverty level and would have been better off not going to college. I’m never going to be able to buy a house or save money. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to enjoy life again.” (Kristina M.)
“We have to stand up against the status quo. We have to call on Congress and keep calling until they hear our message. If you can speak, speak. If you can march, march. When you can vote, vote” (Student nationwide rally for gun control legislation, March 14, 2018). Paraphrasing our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, the time is ripe to speak loudly and carry a big stick. Leave it to the late Howard Zinn’s to put his finger on the solution: “The really critical thing isn’t who’s sitting in the White House, but… who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating…”
J’accuse -The Women Speak Up
The Excuse – Dirty Old (and Young) Men Respond
“I don’t know [the accuser] from anyone. I never talked to her. This never happened, they know it never happened and, obviously, you don’t wait 40 years to bring up something like this.”
The Federal Government to Women -You’re Not Our Problem
“It is fundamentally unjust and discriminatory for the [U.S.] government to deny women on Medicaid the same reproductive health options as women with economic means” In 2017, the 1976 Hyde Amendment prohibits 13.5 million women of child-bearing age from using their Medicaid health insurance to cover the cost of an abortion. Since 1977, over one million women have been forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.”
Amazon/Whole Foods and Walmart: a gruesome story of unbridled corporate avarice, monopoly management of the U.S. marketplace, and naked plundering of the wallets of the American public. This article uncovers the dirty deeds and callous behavior that made the three founders fabulously wealthy and left the American republic much worse for wear.
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepting the Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Once upon a time there was a very wicked man who also happened to be a U.S. congressman. He didn’t care too much for “uppity” women. He once said “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the […]
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