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The conscientious quest for turning around our fragile democracy can usefully turn its attention to a widespread but sub-visible phenomenon that can be called “The Next Step Not Taken.” Let’s look at three areas needing fundamental reforms where the people who can get them in place are not taking the next step. 1. Call them…

While many impoverished American families are shivering in the winter cold for lack of money to pay the oil baron their exorbitant price for home heating oil, ex-oil man, George W. Bush sleeps in a warm White House and relishes his defeat of the Congressional attempt to get rid of $15 billion in unconscionable tax…

‘Tis the Holiday Season and a time congenial for reading books. Here are my recommendations of recent books that relate to the quest for understanding today’s events: 1. Jeno: The Power of the Peddler, (Paulucci International) is the biography of89 year old multiple entrepreneur, Jeno Paulucci, of Duluth, Minnesota and Sanford, Florida. One of a…

Gail Collins, the columnist for the New York Times, has a problem. While regularly writing in a satirical or sometimes trivial way about the foibles of the two major Parties’ front-running presidential candidates, she can scarcely hide her disdain for the small starters, the underdogs. In a recent column about what she saw as the…

Rome, Italy Rumors that Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, would again reduce interest rates by at least 25 basis points elevated Asian and European stock markets and rattled the New York Mercantile Exchange oil speculators. Normally, such an action by the Fed— the all purpose government guarantor of “Wall Street’s” reckless risk taking — would…

They are free, valuable, personal and too often not mentioned or used. I speak of the insights, wisdom and experiences of families over several generations. Now that Thanksgiving weekend is over, how many families recounted some of their traditions for their children and grandchildren to absorb and enjoy? It is highly probable that electronic toys,…

The “Business of Green” and “Green is Gold” are among the phrases finding their way onto the nation’s business pages and into the advertisements of major corporations. After years of corporate greenwashing, is this wave of corporate greenmania for real? Is it more than hype when the New York Times marks a recent article with…

One of the most noticed photographs in the newspapers last week was that of a well-dressed Pakistani lawyer on the streets hurling back a tear gas canister toward the soldiers who were suppressing a demonstration by lawyers protesting the martial law (called “emergency rule”) of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Can anyone remember anywhere in all of…

Question of the day- who and what is determining the price of oil and your gasoline and home heating bills? Don’t ask Uncle Sam, because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are running a regime marinated in oil that does not issue reports which explain the real determinants of petroleum pricing beyond the conventional supply-demand…