Post Alpaca Lips Posts

When you are down and out, wealthy Americans are there to kick, and knock you about. Photo by   Solal Ohayon   on  Unsplash . Originally published on Medium . . In mid 1974, seven months after my father lost his job, we were all a few weeks away from living in the street, Dick and Dot, myself and my four sisters. Thankfully, dad did get six months of severance pay, at 60% of his salary. Yes, that was better than nothing, but getting your pay cut 40% overnight will dramatically change your current, and near future perspective. Few Americans are able to continually save enough of their take home pay to cover such a deficit for very long. Luckily, dad was able to get a loan from his aunt. Shortly afterward he also found a job, or just into the eighth month of joblessness. Sadly, he was never able to regain the same financial footing; he died in debt 33 years later. . My birth family’s full story was not a terrible one. It came very close to an all too frequent tragedy, and n...

Photo by   Silas Hao   on  Unsplash First published on Medium . . The legislative process, where ideas to improve society and democracy go to die. The political process is necessary, but insufficient. Our democratic institutions are restrained and compromised for various reasons. Some of the restraints made more sense when our Constitution was initially developed. However, our democracy was undermined and compromised by slavery. The southern slave states got more than our future bargained for. . The enslavement of millions created the byproduct of states’ rights, an individual-rights constraining aberration, and abomination. Although the   separate   states do provide some vital restraints on the federal government, it is hard to disentangle their benefits from the exaggerated value put on them by slavery, and the many internecine disruptions states’ rights loosed on our future. . T he Civil War was a terrible event, and states’ rights was the   catalytic c...