Posts by: brandenpridgen

Extreme Agreement


Don't turn this over to corporate lawyers

Don’t turn this over to corporate lawyers

Reading time – 61 take-action seconds  .  .  .

It’s almost midnight on the Doomsday Clock to sell out our children  .  .  .

There are lots of reasons that people who have seen the ugly fine print of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TTP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) don’t like them. Here is a short list:

  1. Millions more American jobs will be sent overseas, just as happened with NAFTA.
  2. American wages and benefits will be cut, our standard of living will continue to fall and tens of thousands more Americans will be dumped into poverty.
  3. The environment will be irreparably harmed by inadequate or nonexistent regulation in third world countries.
  4. These deals will help big business and will harm American small businesses where 80% of Americans work.
  5. The Fast Track provision gives this president and every president too much power.

That’s why Americans overwhelmingly oppose these deals. Truly, though, as important as all of those are, they pale in comparison to this:

Adopting these trade deals will relinquish American sovereignty to a panel of three corporate lawyer/lobbyists.

Yes, really. Don’t take my word for it. Have a look at the examination of this issue by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker magazine. Perhaps you think this is just a lefty issue, so have a look a what a slew of righties have to say about this. And I can’t believe that I’m offering a link to what Phyllis Schlaffly has to say, but here it is. They all dislike these deals and for the same reason.

Okay, the righties also hate them just because President Obama is in favor of them. But they don’t like the idea of relinquishing American sovereignty any more than you do. So, even the extremes agree. Still, there’s all that big corporate money twisting the arms of legislators to approve these deals.

So the issue is getting our legislators to wake up and do what they were sent to Washington to do – represent you and me. And they will be voting again on Fast Track. That’s why you must

CONTACT YOUR SENATORS TODAY

Do it here:           http://www.senate.gov/

Just enter your state in the top right corner of the web page, then click GO. Then click the Contact line for each of your senators.

In Illinois, call:

Sen. Dick Durbin   (202) 224-2152
Sen. Mark Kirk      (202) 224-2854

Tell them or copy/past into your email:

I am a constituent and I want you to vote NO on all votes related to the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, including Fast Track. Defeat these bad deals for Americans.

Email or call now. And forward this blog to your righty and lefty buddies so that they take action, too.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Some Get That It’s Hotter


Pope Francis

Pope Francis

Reading time – 53 seconds  .  .  .

Galileo Galilei published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632 in order to defend his heliocentric theory of the universe, his theory being based upon his scientific findings. For his exacting efforts he found himself tried and convicted by the Roman Inquisition for being “vehemently suspect of heresy.” He spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest because of his reprehensible notion that the Earth is not the center of the universe.

It took over 400 years – into the 1950s – for the Catholic Church to admit that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution just might be a useful and credible scientific notion. Pope Paul VI rejected all forms of contraception except abstinence (Q: What do you call couples who  use the rhythm method of birth control? A: Parents). Pope Benedict XVI told us in 2009 that condoms would make the HIV/AIDS scourge worse, not better.

The history of the Catholic Church accepting and embracing advances in knowledge is rather spotty.

But now Pope Francis, the new guy, has a very different view of science, even proposing the crazy notion that our planet actually is warming and that we humans are making things worse. Go ahead and read his Encyclical Letter and you just might be amazed that it was written by a pope. Apparently, this pope doesn’t have his head stuck in the understandings of 2,000 years ago and really gets that we’ve learned a few things along the way.

Wouldn’t it be just great if our climate denying legislators had as much sense?

Worse, if they do have as much sense but continue to act as though they don’t, what is motivating that behavior? Another way to ask the question is, “Who benefits from their baseless denials?” As always, follow the money.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this blog along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Watch This


TPP-Fast-Track-Congress-400x209Reading Time – 27 seconds  .  .  .

The call to action last week was to defeat the fast track bill, which would  have eliminated congressional oversight from a major trade deal. In case you are a President Obama supporter and think that he should have had free reign on such matters, think for just a moment how you would feel if that same power were vested in President George W. Bush. Bad idea.

This TPP issue isn’t over, though, because while fast track has been removed from consideration, it can be reintroduced and more arm twisting of legislators can be done. Even more to the point, though, is the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty itself. It represents a horrid abdication of American sovereignty and a turnover of trade power to lobbyists from big international corporations. Is that really what you want to see happen?

This bill is just one more iteration of big money influencing our politics and corrupting our democracy all for the benefit of – guess who? – the big money people. It is called plutocracy or corporatocracy – rule by the corporations. That means this is no longer a democracy – rule by the people – and you lose.

You can roll over and play dead so that your children will become chattel for the corporations or you can stand up to this abuse. There is no middle ground. You are either fighting for the America you believe in or you are ceding America to the rich.

Watch this space for a call to action as we get closer to voting on TPP. Then take a stand. Meanwhile, watch this.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

President Obama’s Nefarious Ad Campaign


TPP-Fast-Track-Congress-400x209Reading time – 21 seconds  .  .  .

President Obama is pushing a million dollar ad campaign to twist the arms of Dems in the House to vote to fast-track the Trans Pacific Partnership (Read: Global Rule by Corporations).

Just get this: it’s a  BAD DEAL FOR AMERICANS, because it will:

  1. Kill millions more American jobs, just like NAFTA did. (Remember that “sucking sound” of jobs going to Mexico? They’ve moved on since then, but they’re still gone from America.)
  2. Allow the Banksters to continue to be unregulated, too big to fail and a threat to our entire nation and to your savings.
  3. CEDE OUR NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY TO A PANEL OF INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE LOBBYISTS.

The list of bad things TPP will do  is so long and so bad that there’s no way to detail it all here. But just the three things listed above ought to boil your blood. So stop being a passive victim of organized governmental crime and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

The House votes Friday, June 12, 2015 on Fast Track. Call your representative and demand a NO vote. It’s easy:

Call (202) 224-3121

and ask to speak to your congressperson – they’ll ask for your zip code.

or go to

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

and enter your zip code to find the phone number of your congressperson. Then dial your phone.

Tell the nice staffer who answers the phone (they really are pleasant and easy to talk to) that:

  1. You are a constituent
  2. You want your congressperson to VOTE NO ON FAST TRACK.

DO THIS RIGHT NOW. STOP READING THIS BLOG AND DIAL YOUR PHONE OR CLICK ON THE LINK. REALLY, NOW.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

501c(4) Organizations and You


IRS BuildingReading time – 59 seconds  .  .  .

There is a really good reason why we give tax exempt status to charitable institutions: we as a nation have decided that we want to ease the way for organizations whose sole purpose is to do good for our needy and make it attractive for citizens to support these organizations.

There is a really good reason why most of our educational institutions are not taxed: we as a nation have decided that education is a really good thing and we want to support and encourage the education of our kids.

There are museums, hospitals and many more kinds of organizations that are tax exempt because their sole purpose is to do good for all of us. Our laws are structured to protect that do-gooding and they are strictly enforced, right? Turns out, not so much.

For example, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is a 501c(4) organization, so by IRS definition its raison d’être is to operate exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. But Crossroads GPS spent nearly $71 million “electioneering” during the 2012 general election cycle. That’s money that was spent primarily on negative TV and radio ads designed to trash opponents of candidates whom Rove’s contributors supported. What seems to be missing from their actions is any social welfare, even as Crossroads GPS is exempt from federal tax.

And that’s just Rove’s 501c(4). There are many more 501(c) organizations enjoying tax avoidance benefits, all the while flaunting the law. And the story gets worse.

Donors to 501c(4) organizations can remain anonymous. That means that you and I don’t know who is contributing millions of dollars to these secret organizations and using their money to construct a government that is, let’s say, “friendly” to them.

All of that comes to us courtesy of the lame-brained Supreme Court decision that was crammed by Chief Justice John Roberts into a case that had nothing to do with political contributions, expenditures by non-profit organizations or public do-gooding. The distorted finding of the Citizens United case legitimized rule by the rich and remains one of the most democracy killing actions in U.S. history.

How’s that working for you?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Fear Mongering


President George W. Bush at the Cincinnati Museum Terminal, October 7, 2002, claiming Iraq had WMDs and Saddam was in partnership with al Qaeda
President George W. Bush at the Cincinnati Museum Terminal, October 7, 2002, falsely claiming Iraq had WMDs and that Saddam Hussein was in partnership with al Qaeda

Note: On Friday there was an error in the link from the email notification of this blog to the blog itself. Apologies for the mistake and thanks to all who sent a heads-up that the link didn’t work. JA

Reading time – 17 seconds  .  .  .

I’ve been wondering and worrying for many years about the enormous rise in worldwide fear and anger. The world seems so much more polarized today, more us-versus-them. What is driving that?

Today I got a piece of the answer via this essay on the Daily Kos. The short answer is that for years our government and political mouthpieces manipulated us by means of fear. They made sure we stayed scared by flashing in our faces the idiotic color-coded threat levels, by telling us to line our windows with duct tape and by warning us to scan airplanes for bad guys. And they did it with outright lies.

Fear mongering was and still is being used as a propaganda tool. And don’t think for a minute that you’re somehow immune to this sick use of power, because it doesn’t work that way.Goebbels

Just click through and read the essay. Do it now and you will understand. And you won’t like what you read because it is so – what’s the word? – Goebbels.

Be sure to give some thought to exactly who benefits from the fear mongering. It isn’t you.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

What Have We Become?


MD-Memorial-Day-Sale-2014-510x2501Reading time – 53 seconds  .  .  .

Mattress Discounters will save you hundreds of dollars during their Memorial Day sale, with 48 months interest-free terms. WOW! A new mattress and free money for four years. What a great Memorial Day deal!

Ashley FurnitureNot to be outdone, Ashley Furniture is having a sales event with price reductions storewide and with no interest charges until January, 2021. That’s fourty-two dog years from now.

Chevy Memorial DayBut think bigger. Chevy is giving 15% of MSRP cash back on select models over the Memorial Day weekend. Isn’t that what it’s all about? I mean, aren’t we supposed to focus this holiday weekend on buying stuff on sale? What could be more American and what could be more appropriate for Memorial Day than scoring a new Chevy Cruz at a discounted price?

New Yorker Memorial DayAnd be sure not to miss the last chance to subscribe at a significant discount this Memorial Day to the magazines you won’t read. Time is running out, so click through that email to the website where they honor Memorial Day by offering for sale dozens of magazines you haven’t heard of.

Somebody please tell me what mattress, furniture, automobile and magazine sales have to do with a holiday dedicated to remembering our military dead.

When did we shift from the intent of Decoration Day – the original name for Memorial Day, a time reserved for decorating the graves of our fallen military – to crass commercialization? Are we such world class avoiders that we just don’t want to think about our sons and daughters having died on the field of battle?

Or is it that we are that easy to distract? That’s significant, because if we are, then we are easy to manipulate and that assures constant war. After all, if the sale is good enough or if the sporting event is exciting enough, we won’t notice our dead soldiers. That’s good for both business and politics because it benefits war materiel profiteers and their political puppets.

Here’s about as crass as it gets: This is an ad from hhgregg’s Memorial Day flyer.hhgreg Memorial Day The ad copy reads:

2015 Memorial Day Sale at hhgregg

It’s a day to honor those who have served – or are currently serving – our country. If you’re looking for the best Memorial Day specials, hhgregg has your 2015 Memorial Day (or weekend!) shopping covered.

The picture is of a couple of war medals, dog tags and an old cover sitting on a flag. Now go buy a TV.

They didn’t even get right their description of the day. They say it’s to honor those who have served, but that’s wrong. It is to honor those who were killed in action. Dead people. And hhgregg seems to be dead to that reality. Is that what we have become?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

What Has Changed?


VIetnam War picReading time – 77 seconds  .  .  .

America’s military involvement in Vietnam began by sending a few advisers, this just a few years after the end of the Korean conflict (read: undeclared war). We all know how that war ramped up and cost the lives of over 58,000 Americans and untold numbers of Vietnamese. Actually, it’s still killing and maiming people, due to violently re-discovered landmines and the long term consequences of aerial applications of the toxic, carcinogenic defoliant, Agent Orange.

Since then we’ve sent our men and women to undeclared wars in Kosovo, Grenada, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan – where else? We’ve engaged in near-constant war for so long that most Americans now living will be unable to identify more than a small period of time when we weren’t at war, this in spite of the complete absence of the ability to rationally justify most of those wars on the basis of real facts (in contrast to hawkish fantasy facts).

Our men and women are always in harm’s way. That glib term means that others are shooting at them, trying to kill them and sometimes succeeding. When that happens, a piece of the rest of us dies, too. Some of us feel it deeply; others refuse to acknowledge the reality and become ever more inured to it and apathetic, thereby enabling the next war.

As our troops were engaged in the unnecessary George W. Bush/Dick Cheney wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I penned the poem below. On this Memorial Day when we remember our military dead, consider how much lasting good those wars have done for America and the world. Then consider who has benefited – that is to say, follow the money.

Be sure to attend the Memorial Day ceremonies in your town. It matters that you show up.

    Where Did the Sixties Go?

Well, some of us were lucky then,
Some not so lucky, went to war
And some of them came back in bags
And we died just a little more.

America was torn apart,
As war drained drafted blood away.
With no draft now the howls are gone,
And men die just the same today.

What's happened to us all since then?
Have we become what we protested?
We got our houses, made our cash
And made the choices we elected.

Yet we're the leaders now, the ones
Who  move and shake and set the sails.
How can it be the ship of state
Seems once again steered on to fail?

The things we knew were wrong back then
Are still as wrong, can't make them fly.
And doing more won't make them right,
Nor twisting truth to justify.

That credibility gap is here.
We know when we are being snowed.
Perhaps we're just too cushy now,
To protest all the lies we're told.

We humans are the only ones
To rationalize, to sing false songs,
Or need to do it to protect
Our fragile selves from being wrong.

Well, some of us are lucky now,
Some not so lucky, gone to war.
And some of them come back in bags,
And we die just a little more.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Absolutely


Finger pointingReading time – 91 seconds  .  .  . 

To the best of my ability to understand them, our far right religious conservatives believe:

  1. That they got it right – about God, about religion, about right and wrong, good and bad.
  2. That anyone who disagrees with point #1 is wrong and eternally damned, because there’s no heaven for them.
  3. That this should be a Christian nation, but not because of what demographics indicate. Rather, they think this should be an expressly Christian America ruled by biblical laws – a theocracy – because of what they think God has said to them.
  4. That following their notion of biblical laws is both required and it is self-justification for pretty much anything.
  5. That compromise in any way from the above is unholy and, therefore, intolerable.

Now, substitute Islam for Christianity, the Qur’an for the Bible and make a geographic adjustment. Somebody please tell me what the difference is between these two groups of fundamentalist, absolutist, arrogant people. I say “arrogant” because these absolutists seem to be saying, “I’m not just right; I’m divinely right.” That’s a lot of turf grabbing for a mere mortal.

Setting aside the Islamist fundamentalists for the moment, explain to me how to deal with the Christian absolutists, because they are making a lot of noise and politicians are getting elected by sucking up to them. Then the politicians are incrementally distorting America to create the theocracy the absolutists want, as recently happened in Indiana. That’s why we need to know how to deal with these people, because this isn’t supposed to be a theocracy, regardless of what Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum  and Sen. Ted Cruz want you to believe. Check with Thomas Jefferson and his pals about that and you’ll see that it’s true.

As for the Islamist fundamentalists, we have the same intractability problem with them. Their world view is steeped in centuries of absolutism, making it a brain contortion to deal with them for those from a Western culture. It’s complicated, frustrating work and every step of every path is fraught with cultural impasses and Through The Looking Glass contradictions.

If you’d like to explore how difficult this is, read Mark Bowden’s remarkable bookGuests of the Ayatollah  Guests of the Ayatollah, which chronicles the Iran hostage crisis. This book was recently recommended to me personally by one of the former hostages whom I met while delivering a leadership workshop. It is a major insight into a critical piece of recent American history. The double benefit of reading this book is getting a peek into the tent of militant Islamic culture in the MIddle-East and its apparent house-of-mirrors world view. Indeed, it provides some understanding of what we will be dealing with for a very long time and with a great deal at stake.

Back once more to our American far right religious conservatives, we need to deal with the challenge they bring, because if this is to remain America, it’s critical that we both stop and roll back the absolutists’ spread of theocracy. What are your thoughts? Post them in the Comments section below.

Source: The Guardian at http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/23/ted-cruz-presidential-campaign-evangelical-christian-voters-gay-marriage-values

Source: The Guardian, March 23, 2015

Note: Click on the bar chart on the left from The Guardian for an expanded view. One way to interpret the results of this poll is that of the 58% of American voters who identify as white and Christian, roughly 2/3 of them see themselves as Republicans and are susceptible to the theocratic appeals espoused by the Bible-thumpers. That’s very dangerous for a democratic (small “d”) America, as these people are reliable voters and because it assaults the First Amendment. That Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution, which the far right religious conservatives say with fierce absolutism that they honor. That yes-we-do-no-we-don’t  support of the Constitution is the same kind of up-is-down logic used by militant Islamists. Are you afraid yet?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Get Government Out of Our Lives


ChaffetzReading time – 47 seconds  .  .  .

On April 15 Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) proposed H.R. 1563, a bill that would require federal workers to certify that their tax records aren’t delinquent, this under threat of dismissal. Chaffetz wants to make sure that those hoards of federal employee tax evaders with debt so large and so delinquent that, ”  .  .  .   [it] may be collected by the Secretary [of the Treasury] by levy or by a proceeding in court,” are brought out of the shadows and put in stocks in the public square. Alright, Jason. You are one tough dude!

And his bill flies in the face of workers’ rights to keep their tax records private and wholly ignores the fact that another department of government – the Treasury – is already monitoring and collecting delinquent taxes. Chaffetz’s bill appears to duplicate efforts, burden citizens, violate rights and is punitive. So, why would he introduce such apparently lame brain legislation that appears to run counter to the Republican “less government” mantra?

It turns out that, “.  .  .  the bill’s requirements apply to employees of the executive and legislative branches, as well as to those in the U.S. Postal Service and the Postal Regulatory Commission.” Hmmm, the U.S. Postal Service is included. Could that be a clue?

Just a few years ago our insightful and ever-vigilant Congress drafted a bill that requires the Postal Service to amass billions of dollars to ensure the pensions of postal workers. It projects the need so many decades into the future that the U.S. Postal Service is putting away retirement funds for workers who have not yet been born. That bill was designed to burden the Postal Service with such a crushing load of debt that it would become bankrupt; then the Republicans’ favorite free marketers could privatize it, cut services, raise rates and make lots of money.

Chaffetz’s bill is just another Republican effort to drive the privatization of all of our government functions in order to enrich their pals. Any time you want to understand this kind of stupid stuff, just follow the money.

And here’s the kicker: The rate of tax delinquency of postal workers is less than half that of the general public. These are solid citizens paying their fair share, but Jason Chaffetz, resolute soldier in the Republican war on government (this primarily for the benefit of rich people), wants to use government muscle to double up on efforts to humiliate and penalize these people.

Jason, your mother must be very proud.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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