Public policy

Blocking the path to the dark side for both:

Many of the guns confiscated this month were stolen – a good number of them locally, but some from out of state as well...too often gun possession by criminals is not punished as harshly as perhaps it should be. People need to know that if they are illegally carrying a gun, they will go to jail.

Common sense dictates that legal gun enthusiasts would embrace efforts to crack down on the illegal gun trade, since that could reduce the likelihood of having their precious guns stolen. But I gave up a long time ago on expecting any form of common sense out of that crowd.

North Carolina's oldest independent state-level citizen conservation group has changed its name to better reflect its current work on behalf of our state's environment. The citizen group known since 1968 as the Conservation Council of North Carolina is now the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters (NCLCV).

Brethren on the left seek to protect folks from corporate exploitation....check. What runs counter to this is when they end up empowering Washington DC bureacrats (republican and/or democrat) to set the protective regulations....and invariably the regulatory process gets gummed up and derailed to protect the corporations (academics call this "capture").

With the billions and trillions tied up in health care, you can count on this happening....(one could argue it has already with special deals cut for pharma and labor...).

My question is: why don't our left of center brothers align with their libertarian cousins and advocate for the solution that we have solid evidence works....the Whole Foods solution and the Indiana solution centered around patient control and freedom....Health Savings Accounts?

The Indiana story ran Monday Mar. 1 in the WSJ...the Whole Foods story ran a few months back.

Could anyone help me understand this?

Paul

Before I begin, I must admit to being a little frustrated with our lack of critical thinking and our readiness to accept information and analysis if it's packaged in a way that pleases us. This character flaw is not limited to one political party or the other, and I believe it's partially an artifact of decades of consumerism and self-indulgence. There are simply not enough people asking the hard questions these days, and that is one of the heralds of a civilization in decline.

Dispatch called earlier so I was expecting them. It was after midnight when they knocked on the door. The seven of them, standing there with nothing except a small suitcase between them. The youngest, leaning into mom, clearly just awakened from his sleep in the patrol car. The oldest boys were bickering and the little girl was barefooted. They were dirty and tired and scared but I could see relief in mom’s face. This was at least a break for her, a chance to breathe and make a plan. I brought them in, offered them food, drinks, and helped mom get her children all tucked into bed before I started the paperwork that would tell me how we ended up together on this hot, hot night in July. The officer left, promising to keep a watchful eye.