Analysis of Nader’s Platform - 2008

As of March 5, 2008, Ralph Nader’s campaign has now placed a preliminary platform online. You can find it here: http://www.votenader.org/issues/
Let’s review the items one by one.
1. Adopt single payer national health insurance
As I understand it, this would work by having, in essence, a single, national, government-run health insurance agency. There are two [...]

Google helps SF homeless with free phone number and voicemail

Here’s an example of how corporations can help renew society:
Google Expands Free Phone Number and Voicemail Project
San Francisco Chronicle
February 28, 2008 4:40 PM PST
Google is partnering with homeless shelters in San Francisco to distribute free phone numbers and voicemail accounts to those without homes, the company said Wednesday…
Since the acquisition of Grand Central last [...]

Flat Tax

Let’s continue to hammer away at one of the core problems with the current presidential race: Republicans and Democrats are both part of the status quo; part of the System that wants to keep people distracted, divided, oppressed, and afraid. They want to keep attention away from ideas that would promote real [...]

Urbanization Crisis and Sustainable Transportation

Ran across this article at the World Resource Institute website:
SUSTAINABLE CITIES, SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION
From the article:
Urbanization - A Glimpse of the Future
“Cities continue to be seen as offering economic opportunity superior to what can be realized in the countryside. Urban migration takes place on such a scale that we now have a new category [...]

Redeeming Corporations and Renewing America

Recently AOL, whom I pay to host one of my websites, has begun treating its customers so badly it’s almost unbelievable. I won’t go into details, but the bottom line is that I need to find a new hosting service. The search led me to the company BlueHost.com, where, among other things, I [...]

Renew America and the World Will Follow

When I came to Europe to visit I hoped I’d to find many good ideas I could take back to the US — new concepts and paradigms for the future. What happened is almost the reverse — the experience made me see appreciate the importance of our leadership role.
Yes, we have difficulties and make mistakes. [...]

Why Vote Third-Party?

Why Vote Third-party?
My goal here is to convince you to vote for a third-party candidate — ANY third-party candidate — in the 2008 presidential election.
The reasoning is simple:
First, it should be evident to all that the Democratic and Republican parties are ‘in cahoots’. There’s not much real difference between them. They distract public [...]

The ‘American Library’ of Leuven

The ‘American Library’ of Leuven
Recently, while living in Belgium, I found myself in great need of a large research library. Investigating the possibilities, I soon learned that the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) had such a library — with Leuven being just 20 few minutes away from my residence by train.
Entering the foyer of [...]

You Do the Math

You do the math.
Someone told me a couple of years ago that he thought we needed to militarily intervene in Iraq because “Somebody’s got to teach those people how to think, don’t they?”
Well, if we wanted to teach them to think, maybe we could have spent our trillion dollars (direct and indirect costs) a little [...]

Energy Efficiency: Trains and Trucks

“A range of separate studies undertaken in the early 1990s suggested that a rail freight train might typically consume around 0.6 Megajoules per tonne km (MJ/tkm), compared to a range of 1.2 - 8 MJ/tkm for road goods vehicles.”
Source:
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/freight/about/issues/energy.htm
This translates to rail freight being from 2 to 13 times more energy efficient than [...]