Gadfly

Where is a Socrates when you really need him?

I was born in 1932 during the Great Depression. I was brought up in a tiny farmhouse without electricity or plumbing. I walked two miles to a little country school for eight years, uphill both ways, of course. So many fascinating things have happened in my 85 years, I wish I could live at least another twenty.

We have just found 15-foot-square footprints of dinosaurs in Australia that lived 130 million years ago that make Ty Rex look like a…

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What does a comma cost? Sometimes, $10 million

We may be in the middle of March Madness basketball in the United States, but nothing can surpass the madness we are dealing with in national and international politics, particularly since King Donald ascended the White House throne.

After months of hard investigative work, the FBI has found out who stole a football jersey with the number “12” that you can buy online for $100—one that was probably “manufactured” in Bangladesh for $2.…

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How can we be so stupid?

So here we go again with healthcare costs. Doctors once were paid pigs, chickens, and veggies for delivering babies. But now we have $10 Tylenols, $1,000-a-day pills, $10,000-a-day hospital rooms, $100,000 surgeries, $300,000-a-year drug protocols, and $500,000 organ transplants.

We are the only industrialized country that does not have health insurance for all its citizens—and sometimes even visitors. A visitor to Paris who ends up in a hospital has the bill…

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Living in the eye of the wealth hurricane

An old Cree Indian prophecy may outline what our future looks like: “When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters have been polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.”

Here is one view by C.J. Polychroniou in a Truthout article, “Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Poor: “The United States is rapidly declining on numerous…

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Is it really high noon all over the country?

The inconvenient truth of unintended consequences has struck again. The National Rifle Association, under the leadership of top-gun Wayne LaPierre, once described by New York newspapers as “the craziest man on earth,” has been pushing for every kind of gun-carrying scheme, with or without permits, with or without any kind of firearm training, whether the carrier is completely nuts or not, and whether the firearm is concealed, open, or…

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Onward, science soldiers, marching off to war -- to fight ‘alternative’ facts

After just a month of the reign of King Donald the First, about 1,800 of our top scientists registered their frustration with the unscientific mess in the White House and Congress by publicly protesting the administration’s actions in Boston’s historic Copley Square on Sunday, February 18.

Most of the protesters were members attending the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of…

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North Dakota bigotry, a national one-week strike, and plutocratic plundering

First, a rant about the Republican North Dakota Legislature. There’s no doubt there are about 70,000 North Dakotans you consider to be second-class citizens. They are your gay brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles, your neighbors, your co-workers and your bosses, your sons and daughters, your nurses and rehab therapists, and the people sitting next to you in the pews of your church.

Because they are…

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The game is rigged

Last year 25 American hedge fund managers, whose income tax rate is about half of what their secretaries pay, made enough billions to fully pay the salaries of over 450,000 teachers.

Thirsty and hungry at Super Bowl 51 this year? A glass of beer was $12 and a hot dog $8, a soda and a few pretzels were only $17, a bottle of water sold for $6, and a parking spot three blocks away charged $50. Want to watch the game from a stadium seat? Seats averaged $6,250.

The research…

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Congress diddles while the Earth wobbles

The first real study of the changes in the earth’s climate took place at Camp Century in Greenland, in 1960, which was supposedly built by the United States to test Arctic construction methods and carry out “other research.” Scientists from the engineering school of Toronto’s York University drilled the first ice core samples in order to study the earth’s climate.

Have you ever heard of Camp Century? It’s a big deal. It had a mobile…

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Dear Mr. President:

I was born in 1932 during the Great Depression on 180 acres of sand and rocks near Little Falls, Minnesota. I played Anti-Over and Pump-Pump-Pull-Away with my 20 schoolmates from surrounding farms in a little country school for eight years. I thought I was living in a great country.

My four older brothers and sisters and I milked 20 cows before breakfast and milked the same 20 before supper. We read books by kerosene lamp. We warmed and cooked by a wood-coal stove in…

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