Rants
* I am sick and tired of our nation's unnecessary gun violence, gun facilitated crime, and gun suicides. A lack of strong national gun control is the biggest problem, and the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment is also at fault.
* It is appalling that our society is so callous that every major city has thousands of homeless people. Some of this is due to land use regulation and building codes that make the best the enemy of the good. Some of this is due to poor pay for entry level workers in many places. Some of this is due to a weak social safety net. Some of this is due to a deficient mental health care system.
* It is too hard for young adults to get started in life, mostly because of high housing costs in desirable cities with good jobs. More than any other reason, this is because land use regulation is too strict and building codes demand more than health and safe buildings.
* Another reason it is hard for young adults to get started in life is student loans. Too many academically able young people don't go to college, or don't finish college, because the cost of higher education deters them. We need better financial aid for people academically able to benefit from it, and should be admitting fewer people who are doomed to fail to higher education.
* We pay far too much for health care, but we don't have universal coverage and our population wide outcomes are poor. We have declining life expectancies and people are getting shorter, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. To a great extent this is because market failures pay medical industry providers of all kinds too much, and because we lack the political will to adopt the universal health care systems found in every other developed and not so developed country.
* I am sick and tired of a nation where we make bad decisions because we have a democracy, a huge share of our citizens are deeply disconnected from reality, and opportunistic demagogues cultivate their ignorance and fear and hate. Honestly, I really have no idea how to solve this, although holding their craven and criminal leaders and activists accountable when they engage in wrongdoing and defraud people would be a good start.
* I am frustrated with people who continue to advocate for more surface warships and tanks despite their clear extreme vulnerability, with people advocating for obsolete amphibious invasion forces, with Air Force planners who disregard their logistics and close air support duties, and with military planners who resist including unmanned systems in our military.
* I am mildly irritated that roughly three federal government agencies are preventing the fax machine from being retired.
* I am irritated at the uncomfortable, poor service, luggage issues, and unreliable schedules that commercial air travel has devolved into.
* I am mildly irritated at two-factor authentication, absurdly inhuman passwords, and voice mail.
* I am annoyed at how badly DeJoy has mismanaged and degraded the U.S. Postal Service.
* I am depressed at the demise of Roe v. Wade and the cruelty that this has spawned.
* I'm frustrated that we can't seem to adopt a public health approach to the opioid epidemic, resist fully legalizing marijuana, and think that making psychoactive drugs illegal is the solution.
* I'm frustrated that we aren't more vigorously supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, when decisive support could make a difference.
* I'm frustrated that we aren't taxing the rich and big businesses enough, while enduring some bad tax policies from the Trump era. We need to increase corporate tax rates, integrate individual and corporate taxes better, end gimmicks like the pass through entity tax break, tax capital gains more heavily, close tax loopholes, restore the casualty loss and cost of earning income deductions, abolish a lot of ineffectual tax credits, and end subsidies for fossil fuels.
* I'm frustrated that insurrectionist and secessionist Republican politicians aren't punished and shut down more vigorously. Politicians who defy the law should see swift, certain, and catastrophic consequences.
* I'm depressed at how bad the U.S. is at getting people vaccinated against COVID and everything else. We need to make spreading disinformation more costly.
* I'm sick of how poorly we treat immigrants. We need to welcome more immigrants, legalize immigrants who are here, and make the path to citizenship easier.
* I'm tired of how we neglect poor children and struggling single moms and families. We need a better social safety net. And we need a solution to men who aren't that smart and can't find a place for themselves in our modern economy.
* I am outraged at how bad our country is at correcting wrongful criminal convictions. This process could be vastly improved.
* I'm am frustrated that our courts are too slow because they are understaffed and have procedures that our slow and expensive and unfriendly to people who can't afford expensive lawyers. Simply hiring more judges and providing independent limited practice legal professionals would go a long way toward improving the situation.
* I am tired of our nation spending way to much money to subsidize a non-Northeast Corridor passenger rail system that performs worse than it did in the 1950s and undermines decent intercity bus service.
* We need to resist and shame book banners.
* I am livid at the scapegoating of transgender people we are seeing these days.
* We need to end the power of individual Senators and minorities of Senators to block popular legislation.
* We need a less extremist Supreme Court to bring about real justice.
* Puerto Rico needs to get in a position to choose between independence and statehood, with no middle ground.
* D.C. needs to have equitable representation in Congress.
* The President should be directly elected.
* First past the post voting should be replaced by either a majority to win requirement with runoff elections, or instant runoff voting, in single member districts, to reduce anti-third party spoiler effects.
* I am depressed at how much worse Ohio and Florida have become.
* I am baffled and sad about how many people support Trump despite his painfully obvious and well known profound flaws.
* I am concerned about the geopolitical impact and militancy of Russia, Iran and it proxies, and North Korea.
* I am concerned about the rise of political violence and threats of political violence as a tactic in the United States.
Good stuff
* We are doing an excellent job of reducing coal consumption.
* We are doing a good job of increasing wind and solar power supplies.
* We are energy independent and doing a decent job of replacing petroleum fueled vehicles with electric vehicles and other green alternatives.
* Slowly, but surely, we are recycling more, wasting less, and composting more.
* We are slowly starting to build higher speed rail and improve higher speed rail in places where it makes sense.
* I am in awe that videoconferencing is now cheap and commonplace.
* The range of music and video we can access via inexpensive streaming services is amazing.
* I like the ability that social media provides to stay in touch with more distant family and friends from my past that I would otherwise have lost touch with.
* I am delighted to see our society rapidly becoming less religious.
* I am glad that we have the legal protections for gay rights that we've secured.
* I like the fact that groceries, household goods, and clothes are far cheaper than they used to be.
* I'm glad to be living in an era when scientific inquiry and research are vigorous.
* I am glad that the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact Eastern European alliance collapsed.
* I am glad that Russia has suffered massive losses in the Ukraine war that undermine its ability to make war with other countries.
* I am glad that China has taken a more capitalist course and has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of deep poverty.
* I am glad that overpopulation of the planet is no longer a real worry.
* I am glad that wages are way up for lower income workers in Denver.
* I am glad that pro soccer finally got big.
* I am amazed at what computers and the Internet can do now.
* I'm glad that we're making progress in removing lead from pipes, and have already removed it from almost everything else.
* I'm impressed by the great variety of foods, both in grocery stores and in restaurants, that are available to us, and I'm a fan of the surge in food trucks.
* I'm pleased to see xeriscaping go mainstream.
* I'm glad that hunting is in a steep decline and that the wolves are being reintroduced.
* I'm glad that a smaller percentage of households own guns.
* I'm glad that rural areas are depopulating, and that our society is continuing to become more urban.
* I'm glad that supersonic commercial flights are soon to return.
* I feel good about the surge in the extent to which people can work remotely.
* I think its good that Plan B and Narcan are now available over the counter.
* I feel good about the strengthening YIMBY movement.
* I am glad that Colorado has gotten a lot more liberal, and that the state of Georgia seems to be heading in that direction.
* I am cautiously optimistic that junk robocalls are becoming less common.
* I think noise cancellation technology is cool.
* I don't miss landline home phones.
* I prefer electronic payments to paying for things by checks sent in the mail.
* It is good that marriage as an institution is strengthening among college educated couples.
* It is good that teen pregnancies are less common.
* It is good that many kinds of crime are still near record lows.
* It is good that fewer people are dropping out of high school.
* It is good that Florida Governor DeSantis is finally seeing his political star fall.
* It is good that bad cops are being held accountable more often.
* It is good that interracial marriage and dating is on the rise.
* It is good that roundabouts are being used more widely.
* It is good that Denver has a much more robust passenger rail system than it did when I moved here.
* It is good that Colorado has gotten some respite from a 1200 year plus drought.
* It is good that we know what causes M.S.
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