I just don’t get it. How can someone with so much contempt for his oath of office, for the Constitution of the United States, and for the people of this country keep getting reelected? Senator Chuck Schumer has embarrassed New Yorkers over and over through sponsorship, support, and voting for bills which plunder American taxpayers, restrict their rights, and build the strangling bureaucracy in Washington and the states.

The United States is in an economic crisis. It is worse than most people realize. Since 1970, average income, adjusted for inflation, has risen 24%. On the same inflation-adjusted basis, government spending, federal, state, and local, has ballooned 320%. That begets more bureaucracy, more strangling regulation and more taxation. Regular increases in the national debt are now measured in the trillions of dollars.

Austerity is a useful word for politicians. It has intrinsically negative connotations. It conjures images of cutting to the bone, of harshness, of strictness, of severity, of a reduced availability of the stuff we need and the luxuries we desire. If the word austerity can be attached to any type of political measure, resistance can be almost guaranteed. Thus it has become the by-word in any attempt to cut government budgets.

“At a time when the nation is confronting some of the more difficult decisions it has faced in long time, a lack of high quality civic education in America’s schools leaves millions of citizens without the wherewithal to make sense of our system of government.” That is from the introduction to the report “The Guardian of Democracy, The Civic Mission of Schools.” More people are disengaging from the political process as time goes on. The question is why.

When comparing the societies of different geographical regions, it is difficult to draw conclusions because there are so many variables involved. There are different cultures and histories, different levels of wealth, and different geographical features. Which factors bring about progress and which impede it is difficult to discern. Sciences like physics have the advantage of experiments, where inputs are held constant and the effects of specific variable factors isolated.

I went hiking the other day and, in spite of the chill and snow, it was nice to be out in the woods. Nature is incredible with all of its many faces; a spectacular sunset, a cheetah on the hunt, or an ant colony full of life and activity. We associate these scenes with nature, but nature itself is really just the sum total of all of the matter and energy in the universe. With that in mind, what is the nature of nature?

“Power to the People” evokes images of downtrodden masses struggling against a repressive regime. It is the image intended by John Lennon’s 1971 song by that name. It was the view that rallied the crowds in the protest marches of the 1960s, and even those in the Tea Party and Occupy movements of today. It implies justice in democratic rule where the masses control the political process.

A recent article from an Associated Press science writer turns up the global warming hype again, saying that we should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters. Extreme weather events have been exploited for decades, but especially so since Hurricane Katrina, with warnings of accelerating climate trauma from human-induced global warming. Unfortunately for climate scare promoters, the subsequent years were relatively quiet from the perspective of weather disasters.

Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian at the dawn of the first millennium AD, observed that “The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.” There are basic rights which people possess by the fact of being born, the rights to life, liberty, and property. People, in large part, respect those rights of others. They don’t steal, murder, or defraud, not because it is against the law, but because it is wrong. It goes against the grain of society. Whatever are the anthropological reasons for morality, violations of other people are generally not tolerated and are punished in some way.

The American healthcare system is broken. Something is certainly wrong when a simple appendectomy, in one day, out the next, with no difficulties or complications, costs nearly $22,000.