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The Seattle Times is reporting that the Medicare prescription-drug program, which Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, alone would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health-care law.

Considering that you are a member of the party who adopted this program and considering that you propose changes in Oregon's education system as part of your Eight Point Plan, would you clearly state for the record that you will fight you own party and  prevent cuts to education acknowledging that such cuts are misguided, election year rhetoric?

posted 2 years, 8 months ago
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There are no checks to keep inititives off a ballot which are based on hate or discrimination... except disclosure of the signee.

posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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Both climate change and population growth is an issue of wealth. The more wealth one owns, the more s/he can participate in reducing their carbon footprint and the more control one has on one's reproductions.  Poorer countries have more children per family; poorer families have more children; poorer families have fewer carbon reduction options. 

Wealth and/or poverty must be part of this discussion.  It is all well and good for middle-class American professors to discuss how population affects global warming -- and nice academic exercise.  However, it is moot when considering the poverty on the ground in Africa, rural China or even poor communities in the US.

http://www.thinkgoodthoughts.com

posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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I have been receiving my news from online sources for more than a decade.  I haven't had a newspaper in my house for years, mainly for ecological reasons.

It just seems to me that paper is simply a delivery medium.  This conversation reminds me of the debate over analog vs. digital media in the music industry.  And to say that the decline of the print delivery method will mean the decline of investigative journalism is like saying that compact discs led to the death of good music.

Newspapers are entrenched and need to adjust their thinking.

See more at http://www.thinkgoodthoughts.com

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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I think it is quite disingenuous to claim that the school lunch program has nothing, or very little to do with the problem. In Title 1 schools obesity starts with breakfast: Cheese Pleasers, Pancakes (with the syrup build in), tater tots, and so on. These are the schools that service the most at risk youth, those whose poverty prevent them from seeking and serving wholesome food at home. My school's kitchen doesn't even have a proper oven, steam table or grill... warming oven and serving area heated with lights. There is no cooking going on there.

We influence our kids' taste for processed and sweet foods at the elementary school level and this taste continues when they come home.

I have twin boys in the fourth grade. One is learning disabled and the other isn't. We eat a low-fat, vegetarian diet at home. I make lunches for them every day, and have since their first day of school. Why is one boy overweight and the other isn't?

I discovered that children are, for the most part, allowed to eat as much as they want at breakfast. A boy like mine, who cannot self-regulate, is allowed to eat six or seven times. The school gets reimbursed for the meals they serve, the food is loaded with fat and sugar, the child cannot self-regulate and you have a perfect storm for obesity.

I volunteer at the school quite often, but still I am unable to watch my son everyday and everywhere. I invite you to have lunch with your child -- or better, breakfast -- and you will be absolutely dismayed by a salad bar filled with iceberg lettuce, carrots that bear a chemical taste, chili served with "scoopin' chips," and Uncrustables. It is absolutely appalling, and to say that the public schools bear no responsibility in all this is quite laughable.

Check out more at http://www.thinkgoodthoughts.com

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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