Bill Maher: Destroying the World to Protect It

By Bill Maher

President Trump has been bragging, as usual, about spending quite a lot of money on weapons, to protect us from the world, even though they respect us like never before. It doesn’t really track, and I dare anyone at one of his rallies to name the weapons we didn’t have before that we…

via Destroying the World to Protect It — Real Time with Bill Maher Blog

The 1% and The 2%

June Op-ed for the Bridge River Lillooet News

Given the daily fiascos in American politics it might be easy to miss the fact that the Military Industrial Complex is doubling its revenue, now that President Rump has convinced/ frightened all NATO members into increasing their military spending.

I’m not sure when it happened, maybe it was when the millions of refugees started pouring out of the Middle East, but it dawned on me that our global community is constantly being manipulated by a small group of weapons dealers, all of whom are virtually invisible and unknown to the rest of us.

Insert Your New Ideas Here

June Op-ed for the Bridge River Lillooet News

In less than 6 weeks the online passenger train petition has 1,150 signatures, and counting. (https://www.change.org/p/premier-gov-bc-ca-bring-back-the-north-vancouver-to-prince-george-passenger-train) The Facebook page—Bring Back the BC Passenger Train—has hundreds of Likes and shares so far. People are keen to have the service.

But as I connect with people and do research, one negative keeps cooling the excitement: even though population, highway traffic, and tourism have significantly increased since the train was cancelled in 2002, would ridership be enough to make a new service profitable?

To that negative train of thought (sorry, the puns abound) I would say this: it’s time to think beyond old-school revenue models. Why force ridership to be the sole profit generator? Let’s re-imagine the passenger train concept and find ways to maximize the infrastructure in terms of the incoming green economy.

Bring Back the North Vancouver to Prince George Passenger Train

For anyone who loves train journeys, or knows how spectacular the landscape of British Columbia is, or loves the old gold rush history, or understands that small town economies are especially vulnerable and need all the help they can get, there’s a new online petition on Change dot org. Please sign and share widely, thanks very much. 🙂

https://www.change.org/p/premier-gov-bc-ca-bring-back-the-north-vancouver-to-prince-george-passenger-train