The “Freedom Caucus” proposes removing maternity care from required health services in federal health care plans. It is their worst idea yet. Lately, the Freedom Caucus champions a freedom that means freedom for them, and for the rest of us means nothing left to lose. Worst of all, their version of perfect is detrimental to the community good.
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The Freedom Caucus is virulently against a large federal government. As far as I can tell, they are against health care rules and regulations, certainly against mandates and taxes, administered at the federal level. I could live with that if there was a smooth transition to local governments able to levy taxes and provide the care. But to levy the taxes at a federal level, and then to not require maternity care, crosses the line.
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True, biological men have 0% probability of getting pregnant. Insurance takes all the potential victims of a condition and averages out the cost even though a small percentage actually succumb to the condition. The “potential victims” pool does not normally include people “not in the pool”, people not at risk. For example, people without cars don’t pay for car insurance. It sounds good until you realize comon practice only defines selective pools when it advantages white men. For example women live longer, and so have to pay more per annuity benefit because on the average the insurance company might have to pay out longer. So a woman that probably didn’t get equal pay while she worked has to pay more into a traditional pension plan per monthly dollar paid out because there are on average more months to pay. However, white men live longer than POC, and yet they are not required to pay more than POC for that same annuity benefit. The insurance business has long structured the pools to benefit white men — whether consciously or unconsciously I could not say. Because the math is complicated, most never notice.
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What Obamacare did was a major advance for women, in that it forced the industry to combine the pools in the health care arena for segments of necessary care. Men contribute to a fund that includes maternity and women contribute to the same fund and it covers prostate cancer. The larger the pool the bigger the benefit on average, and that is called the law of large numbers. The more people in the pool the lower the average cost for all. Average insurance costs less the more people and conditions are in the same pool.
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The Freedom Caucus does not like it. They don’t like larger pools because they do not want federal administration they say. Where math says law of large numbers benefits they see remoteness and inefficiency. I’m sure some of each is true. However, they are white men and the industry as well as the Freedom Caucus is run by white men and if they get average care that is more expensive than what they had before which was privileged care.
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Maternity care and pediatric care should be the first two things covered by any government sponsored health care insurance program administered at any level. Our society needs a next generation to carry on. It is in all our interest to raise a strong generation to succeed us, and to have healthy parents for that child. It would be great if each child had a well-to-do nuclear family like the Freedom Caucus claims it should, but given decimation of good jobs to automation, and the number of children born to single parents in this age, it would also be prudent to tax all of us by income to support the health of the next generation.
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Originally published on Medium in We are all Overcomers
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This presidential election is unprecedented in my lifetime in that it is between two people that should not be president by any conventional standard. I really want a wrecking ball for the Citizens United fiasco that brought us this fiasco of purchased owned candidates and an outsider that does not or has not behaved. I have been undecided longer than usual, but I’ve finally hit on an approach, maybe.
I’ve decided that if both of these candidates are unelectable scoundrels the House of Representatives (dear old won’t pass any laws congress…) will be obligated to impeach them, perhaps on inauguration day they could begin given the lies and/or harassment in the past. This seems more and more the needed recourse should either major party candidate win.
Therefore, I do not have to worry anymore about the character of either candidate. I can look at the platforms of each party and their vice presidential candidate and make a rational decision and then let the House deal with where the unacceptable line on character falls.
Thanks founding fathers for those checks and balances. I have never been so interested in who is running for House seats before.
Now if either candidate redeems themselves (requires a miracle, and inhuman feat) it will be a pleasant surprise.
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The first debate of the 2016 Presidential race promises to be a spectacular competition for American hearts and minds. If for a moment we attempt to filter out the marketing messages, hyperbole and the worldview differences between the Presidential candidates and look at leadership style, there is still a vast and illuminating difference between the candidates.
The Wonk
On the one side we have Clinton, long an analyst steeped in data for every decision. In the age of big data, an analyst seems to be made for these times. However, an engineer can mean to convince company decision makers (that is us in an election) to change direction using a complex set of data they’ve analyzed, and manage to confuse or put the them asleep by miring them in the detail instead. It’s the engineer that had the O ring data about the Challenger space shuttle before its catastrophic launch. The right answer might have been there but no one was persuaded.
It’s the engineers that ran the flight simulations for flight 1549 and concluded the pilot could have made it back to the airport instead of landing in the frigid Hudson river. Go see Sully to feel this problem. Engineers, like finance people, can do tremendous work and still get exactly the wrong answer by leaving out one parameter. They do hours and hours of work, culminating in a decision that may or may not feel like the right one. Executives sometimes feel that something is missing, even if they can’t spot the missing variable in the computer program. The downside of analysis is time taken in hard work, and the need for speed. Sometimes engineers are accused of lack of judgement when they can’t stop and make decisions when data is left unknown. A leadership class once explained to our class in great detail how analysis could be wrong, and cited the company Apple as one that would never rely on such studies to kill a good idea, but would be patient and supportive until the numbers came out right.
Somehow, it is not surprising that a hard working analyst would need help to pace themselves in a way that allowed them to stay healthy ‘till the end. It is one of many ways of going down a rabbit trail vs. seeing the broader picture at hand.
Will Hillary rise above miring us in detail and be the idea person that can set direction and find flaws in big data conclusions?
The Instinctive
On the other side we have Trump, who relies on gut instinct for many decisions. In Blink, Malcom Gladwell calls in sting “thinking without thinking”. That is what it feels like, but that is not what it is. It is thinking with parts of your brain that don’t cause conscious reflection and traceable lines of logic in thought. Gladwell makes a convincing argument for why this type of thought will remain the norm in sales, in human decisions that requires speed. Decisions are made based on trust and conditioning. Great managers often listen to the analysts and then make decisions that also leverage instinct. They excel in determining competent delegates for the analysis and shun ever being mired in detail themselves.
Abraham Kuyper, in an essay called Our Instinctive Life, calls analysis “reflection”, and he argues that all the greatest art, all the greatest thinking, is not based on reflection but instinct. Animals use instinct because they don’t have anything else, but humans also use instinct when creating. Even engineers use instinct when they invent…we believe in backing off the data and going out to wash the car if we want to allow the brain to produce its best ideas. It’s not surprising it is the instinct based leader that would avoid detailed debate preparation, choosing instead to focus on broad principles and direction.
The downside of instinct is that it relies on conditioning. It can and does reflect prejudice and inappropriate bias. That is why decision makers may not be able to be fair in hiring without help. For musicians, the pianist can be put behind a curtain so that decision makers can only hear the music, not see the gender or race of the artist. Many presidential decisions don’t have “the curtain” option and other strategies are needed to prevent bias —an executive branch example would be the bias New York City displayed during stop and frisks.
Will Trump rise above bias and show a convincing leadership that can make great decisions for America?
Conclusion
For some voters, it won’t matter. The worldview differences are great and the decision between candidates is not just a choice of decision making style but a choice of the worldview of the entire team of the executive branch. Even for these voters though, it promises to be a fascinating debate.
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So small French towns have decided that women’s modest swimwear is the equivalent to the black arm bands students got in trouble for wearing to protest the Viet Nam war. If they were, being from the USA freedom of speech, I would expect their protest to be respected. But they are not even protesting, or weren’t at the start. These women don’t seem to be protesting or supporting anything except their convictions that God would want them to be modest on a beach. There is something about the sight of a woman forced to disrobe on a beach that is distinctly unsettling and uncivilized — and uncivilized is not a word we usually associate with French. It is a failure in the separation of church and state, in that state is persecuting people for following their religion.
Many of us had not heard of a burkini, but if we are of any Abrahamic faith at all we know that scripture commends modesty — that tempting men visually is about as friendly as drinking in front of an alcoholic if you are expecting them to focus on anything else. We usually pursue laws that advocate consistency with conscience, so that would mean laws that at a minimum do not prohibit modesty.
Even in a secular world, my doctor has a poster on the wall that says most skin cancer is catalyzed by sun exposure before age 18. A burkini seems like it might be a useful fashion to help prevent skin cancer, especially given we can’t sweat well with sunblock on skin. Maybe we should all wear burkinis. Perhaps the fashion industry could take note.
I am taken back to the first day of fourth grade in a new Kansas town, when I was ejected from school for wearing pants. I remember running home (I was allowed to run home alone!) and mom’s shock. The embarrassment, the anger and the slow realization that these people were requiring that I dress less functionally, less rationally just to be more girlish in their sight. I was angry then even as I put on the mandated dress, and I empathize with the burkini crowd now.
I appreciated being able to wear pants most days for the decades of my corporate career long after those dress codes were gone. I hope the French can see there way to welcoming burkinis, and that we all do. Given global warming and skin cancer, maybe they should be the next big thing.
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Driving down a major highway at night coming off a major mountain range feels like being poured off the edge of the earth. As if you could miss the earth by going so fast and fall off curved edge of our planet, sucked into a forever darkness. The major highway causes higher speed limits than give comfort, and the darkness and curves not to mention wind through passes mean you don’t know what is ahead, except what it says on the map. The speed means you won’t have control long if its wrong, and the downhill is suspected to be a long way down on one or both sides. You can’t afford this fall.
That is faith. Faith that nothing has gone wrong around the next bend, faith that the road continues to banked for high speed as promised, checks and balances in place. I won’t say its faith in God because God might prefer a slowed speed…though assignments from God are doled out often a step at a time, and have that same requirement for faith, and the same feel to them.
That is faith. Faith that nothing has gone wrong around the next bend, faith that the road continues to banked for high speed as promised, checks and balances in place. I won’t say its faith in God because God might prefer a slowed speed…though assignments from God are doled out often a step at a time, and have that same requirement for faith, and the same feel to them.
The coach once told me one of the male racers was so powerful because, beyond being talented and trained, he had the mental fortitude to be able to ride new territory as quickly and courageously as trails he’d been on many times before. Is that courage or recklessness I thought to myself? For the record, the guy lived long enough to retire from racing and get a job for a communications company. Was that courage or luck or well placed faith in skills, map-reading and God?
For my road trip, I eventually slowed down. It was shortly after passing the aftermath of two tractor trailers colliding…that is two professional drivers and they surely did run too close to some limit.
Arriving home and returning to electronics I found I was just in time for the Republican National Convention. Speeches to hear not as heavily reported as the candidate’s include Peter Thiel and Ivanka Trump. However, the bottom line for me was this: Trump is a bull in a china shop. I mean this in the best of ways along with the worst of ways.
We need a bull in a china shop to destroy what Citizen’s United enabled with our current corrupt system. Donald Trump is able to be that wrecking ball because he has the means and the passion to do so. I don’t see anyone else standing up to what I know is real. I might not have been so convinced it was real but the supreme court and congress members are enjoying rewards from lobbyists that would not pass corporate ethics set of rules. Our lawmakers spend all their time raising money. Voting is shut down in ways I thought were limited to third world companies — I saw this first hand in Arizona but it happened many places and it hurt Bernie Sanders, his campaign claimed before they too were bought. Clinton while not criminally prosecuted, was also not cleared. She behaved in ways many corporations would have disciplined her for if not let her go— and we are supposed to promote her? If we do, will we get rid of the system that corrupted her?
The media loved to moan about how the convention shouldn’t have shouted “lock her up” about a professional political opponent. But they weren’t saying it because she was a politician. They were saying it because they perceive wrongdoing. Of course, they were a little one-sided about it. At least one speaker on stage (from my state no less) is also of accused of crimes and I didn’t notice them objecting to him. He’s not guilty yet, maybe? Hmmm.
And yet, globally we may not be able to afford a bull in a china shop. Trump showed he can appear presidential long enough to deliver a wonderful speech, and pick a tried and true running mate. He promised great television and he delivered, giving Cruz enough rope to hang himself in front of all of us — talking about principle but not living the very principles he was espousing by going rogue himself after voters have spoken. Then Trump took to twitter and worked tarnishing what he’d built, wrecking relationships that could withstand a more traditional fight…can the Secret Service take his twitter feed away and make us safe from the side effects of a Trump presidency?
No. We will not be safe. The existing agreements are meant to lead to flat world, appealing because each human is an image bearer of God and valuable. But the world was never flat. Our system has succeeded because of discipline and principles, principles like the rule of law at the heart of which is our constitution. These principles are being torn apart by Citizen’s United and egregious corporate profits. Corporations leverage the cheap labor and resources in other countries while retaining high prices for the countries losing jobs— pocketing the difference, and there was nothing to stop them. Current policies have not made the world flat, but they have made corporations exceedingly wealthy. To be a domestic bull in a china shop will necessarily mean being a global bull in a china shop.
Trump has taken on the world as we know it. The establishment and his political opponents would make us think it means the end of the world and war, and I doubt that. But rest assured it will be the end of government finance and USA’s global role in trade as we know them, in order to produce more decent paying jobs here. But can we afford the wrecked relationships on a global scale that seem to come as collateral damage?
Trump might learn not to take to twitter…he MIGHT. He MIGHT not. He has till November…
I am an undecided voter, and am still thinking through exactly how fast we can afford to drive down the highway ahead. You think too.
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On June 27, 2016, the Supreme Court issued their decision to strike down a restrictions on abortion because the restrictions had no data justifying that their benefits outweighed their cost. Pro-choice advocates cheered and pro-life advocates expressed grief at their defeat. However, the decision wasn’t just about abortion. It was about integrity, as measured by available data.
Abortion detesters believe abortion destroys sacred human life. When they advocate for solutions that preserve fetal life they are very strong, appealing to basic human and maternal instincts. When they transition to restrictions with other rationales they are weaker. As long ago as Genesis 3: 1-13, the devil’s main weapon was deceit. When the new rationale has no measurable data to justify it, the Supreme Court had the integrity to say NO. The new restrictions smelled too much like deceit. American law isn’t based on deceit. Evangelicals that hate abortion should also hate deceit. They should recognize the movement was tempted to deceit, or actions perceived as deceitful, in wrangling ever more imaginative restrictions.
When this nation rejects abortion, it should be because a majority in the nation believe it destroys something sacred, a potential human life that is valued by this culture as fundamental to its long term success. If there were such a majority, an honest amendment to the constitution could succeed.
Until such a time, it will be a mother’s choice. A mother’s natural instincts are to support her child. We should focus on ways to make sure her decision isn’t pressured by others (e.g., an unwilling father or parent wanting an easy way out), and by assuring her and her child paths to success (e.g., support, and/or adoption) even in poor economic circumstances. We should focus on the elements that force her hand, not on the surgeons and clinics executing a legal procedure. Items to tackle include the perception that an immediate career impact or educational delay is somehow worth sacrificing a growing potential child. We can tackle by lessoning the impacts, and by honoring the sacrifice if impacts are endured. We should be clear that while motherhood is a most honorable option, carrying a baby to term for others who are more able to parent is also honorable. Honor often involves sacrifice, as an individual and as a society. If we value that sacrifice, more will choose it.
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The boy stole something he craved. His mom was livid. “Why?”
“Why would you do this when you know it is wrong? You are grounded until you can explain it to me.”
He may be grounded a very long time. He rarely if ever had seen the inside of a church. His mom doesn’t find God useful, and considers God’s tastes a bit bloody. The devil is relegated to an entertainment zone, not feared as real. In past generations, the mom would be expected to explain to the boy, not the boy to the mom.
Who can explain their own dark side? If we do not acknowledge the scariness of the dark within, how do we find the light?
When young, we have a tendency to act without considering likely outcome. But age doesn’t make us any less tempted. It could just make us carefully consider the consequences, and then make a more careful plan to evade them.
Conscience is the human vehicle that makes us know moral light from dark, and that grounds us to socially acceptable behavior in a group. Child psychologists claim it forms first from the voices of parents inside a child’s head — first audibly and then within the brain recalled as memory, and then as a unique and personal voice.
When the parents do not know or are not available to teach, and we have eliminated required public forums for the community to teach how to overcome temptation based on past wisdom, what is left but commercial predators striving not to teach but to intensely entertain or attract. If God speaks through conscience as the Puritans believed, and the conscience is ill-formed, can a society break its children’s ability to thrive, and in two generations a culture’s ability to thrive? Will we be left then with a macabre Lord of the Flies?
From a Christian point of view, scripture promises the church, the body of the living Christ, will not fail. However, no one promised the surviving church would be American, or even western. Freedom was not one of the three major weapons in combating evil. Rather it was the blood of the lamb, the word of God’s children’s testimony and the willingness of God’s children to give up their lives. In eliminating forced worship with our separation of church and state, we cannot be willing to give up an ability to share authentic un-commercialized stories, not even at the cost of life itself. That would be tossing the baby with the bathwater that made the baby clean.
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When I heard Ted Cruz was evoking the image of solitary five year old in a public restroom I was flabbergasted. Does he really let a five year daughter old go into a public rest room alone? Fathers, both single fathers and fathers on father-daughter excursions, have to take their young children with them to the rest room just like moms do, don’t they?
The image was concocted to counter objections to a law in North Carolinaspecifying how to choose your bathroom.
Maybe it’s just my “New York Values” causing alarm. Before I first moved east I was warned as a college age woman NEVER to use a public rest room in New York City. I believed my expatriate NYC friends. Even New York administrators reflect those ex-New-Yorkers-moved-west values becausemany public restrooms are closed. If they are replaced it will be with individual units that don’t have to be labeled by sex.
Sadly, the most dangerous rooms east or west turn out to be the ones in your home, your friends’ homes and places you gather with what you believe are your friends. That is because most sexual abuse occurs from men that the victims — and often the victim’s families — know. These are mostly men that misuse their authority and/or strength with the children, women, or lower status males in their lives.
If we are at all honest the idea of breaking down public restrooms and showers by gender was never safe. In public, there was always the potential for same sex attack and adult attack of minors, even as far back in the time as the Roman Empire. C. S Lewis discusses it frankly when describing the boys’ schools he was sent to. In Surprised by Joy, he claimed sexual attack was common and unavoidable. That was in the early 1900’s, before you could legitimately blame secularism or individualism.
Science studies indicate our brains just don’t think rationally sometimes inassessing risk. Christians describe the cause of this as the noetic effects of the fall.
Perhaps there is a useful way to think about the issue of bathroom access, using Roger Williams’s thought process. If we use the Roger Williams’s analogy we are all on a ship. We have a right to our different consciences, values, morals, religions but there are certain activities — like not molesting each other — prohibited or required in order to keep the civil peace. When considering legislation we should ask, where has civil peace been at risk? We should gather some facts, about when and how has it most been at risk. Then we can work to reduce the risk.
If we accept the real issue is fear of molestation, and look at the actual crime statistics on that molestation, I contend we will end up closer to whereFrank Bruni and Donald Trump come out on the issue as compared to Ted Cruz and the current North Carolina position. Possibly we want to create new spaces with better privacy and protection. For sure we want to accompany our children in higher risk settings.
Another approach for Christians to look at is what Jesus did when a woman was accused of sexual sin. He pointed out we’re all guilty given his high standards, and asked if anyone cared to throw the first stone. None dared. Transgender people are our neighbors. Some have mocked them, however unfortunately, as if they were somehow someone’s enemy. Jesus said our job is to love our neighbors, even if they are our enemies, to love them as we love ourselves. I don’t know about you, but when I have to go, I don’t want to be hassled to show my birth certificate, I don’t want to discuss which door to choose. If people are choosing to go about their business peacefully, let them be.
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He is an OUTSIDER. He doesn’t fit —for example not pro-life or pro-choice pre-molded positions.
He actually uses his brain cells. He doesn’t get it right on the first try but he listens. Eventually he’ll make a good deal.
Think about the furor over his latest abortion comments. He has shown the hollowness of BOTH positions in a few brief sentences.
First, he pondered that there needed to be some form of punishment, and that surely that would include the woman, and perhaps not the man. Then his campaign said of course the woman was a victim, trying to pull back to an establishment pro-life position.
If you are in the pre-molded pro-choice camp, unless the woman has experienced rape, incest, or a medical condition threatening her life you don’t believe the woman is a victim. You think she is an accountable adult making decisions for her own life, and you do not acknowledge there is another life form yet that should have moral weight in that decision. You do not acknowledge any right of others to intrude for the best interests of a larger society. In this worldview there is no crime, and no victim, and no punishment required. There are also fewer babies to adopt, and a lower reproduction rate than our biology would drive. Whatever that potential baby is, it is alive. Whether you give it the moral status more like a human or more like a puppy or more like cells you grew in a petri dish, it is alive. This position as pre-molded rings hollow because whatever the woman is doing, it affects more than her life alone. Whatever her situation, it is difficult, and we all know the best decisions are not made alone in a crisis.
If you are in the patriarchal worldview that many pre-molded pro-lifers seem to occupy, and that some fathers who want out seem to push on their women, the woman is treated not quite as an adult fully capable of a rational decision. That is the only way you can consider her a victim if there was not a rape, incest or medical condition. What exactly would she have been a victim of? A bankrupt moral society that teaches her sex is just another pleasure and that she can have power over men with her good looks? A technology failure of her birth control?? If a woman is an accountable adult, and if she has failed to prevent pregnancy shouldn’t she be accountable, after all? You can see that thought coursing through Trump as he struggles with the question. He wants to treat women as adults, and the pro-life view takes her adult decision-making accountability away from her. It is equally hollow.
If the woman were a victim of drug addiction, we would seek to treat her but we would also examine if she should punished for any crimes she may have committed. We’d struggle with treating it as primarily a crime or a medical condition. Why are we so sure if women are adults and abortion is bad, that we wouldn’t want to counterbalance the pain of continued pregnancy with a consequence that would deter abortion? Say a tax large enough to give pause on the abortion, used for children’s health? Donald Trump’s outside view might not be tenable, but it is worthy of more thought than the politicians jumped to in their pre-molded positions. If it’s not tenable, at least he is still listening. I don’t see any of the other candidates trying to forge new territory here.
A growing portion of America is pro-life and pro-choice. Most of America recognizes women ARE adults and should be accountable as the assigned decision-maker. Most of America looks at the sonogram on the fridge of a pre-born baby and knows it is alive, and will be human. Most of us don’t think anyone should be sentenced by the status of our parents — we live in America, the land of the free, the land of opportunity! The potential baby should get its shot — be that with biological mom or adoptive parents. Donald Trump may be crass, and he may not be a professional politician, but he is thinking and listening and while he has escaped the clutches of past Democratic leanings, he is quite clearly not yet a captive of the Republican establishment.
Maybe he’ll figure out how to get more modern day Alexander Hamilton-like kids their shot at life. Hamilton’s mother wasn’t well off, or married, and didn’t survive long enough to fully raise him.
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The desert sunlight is relentless and unforgiving — unless you plan ahead. The animals and plants must compete viciously to acquire and retain water, and then bloom passionately in deep colors during brief favorable conditions. Only the extreme survive, but when they do they tend to survive for ages, growing slowly but with deep roots. The people reflect the lessons of their environment.
It all sounded great on paper: we can vote ahead of time by sending in a simple paper ballot. New Jersey never had such a feature! You did have to sign up for a party to be able to vote in a primary, consistent with planning ahead.
However, Republicans couldn’t vote early if they wanted to know who was going to be in the race. Democrats couldn’t vote early if they were considering the Bern, and they were trying to decide if he was Presidential.
So, the voter turnout was higher than expected, although not higher than the 2012 presidential primary per Rob O’Dell of AZ Central.
Something strange happened in Maricopa County that did not seem to happen elsewhere, even in Arizona. Many polling places were CLOSED and the few that were open did not have enough parking and were understaffed. Many people here live without cars and the polling place for those people was far away. Neighborhoods with fewer car owners had even fewer polling places than well off neighborhoods where all have cars.
Is it possible that the establishment is that vicious here? That the Democratic establishment was vicious and did not want to know that ASU students feel the Bern? That the Republican establishment didn’t want Joe Arpaio’s crowd to be able to take enough time off work to vote? Did they collude to disenfranchise our voice?
The people of Maricopa County are equally tough. By day people stood in line for an hour or more and by night they protested the end of the line cut-off at 7pm because the unexpected lack of parking nearby made it impossible to get in line after work. We voted. At least some of us did. How many were lost because the bar was set so high? Pox on the establishment for effectively violating this fundamental right of some challenged people to vote.
The saddest part of the voting yesterday is that when you got to front of the line you found a box for filled out mail-in paper ballots. I didn’t get a picture of that — didn’t see it in time and then didn’t want to slow down the line. The smartest among us were able to skip the line, drop the paper ballot mailed to them, and go. But it was not announced, there was not even signage. The box was unlabeled on the floor and looked a little suspect. The news was not on the TV (that I saw) about a way to skip the line, and was not widely known based on my unscientific exit poll in the parking lot. It felt like the establishment didn’t want us to know. Hint for November: save that paper ballot. Plan ahead. I am learning to once again be a desert dweller.
The Maricopa our county is named for descend from one of the great ancient civilizations, here called the Hohokam, the “already gone”. A nomadic traveling people that were called different names in different places, they spread technologies like the milpa, a way to synergistically grow nutritious complementary plants together so that they catalyze each other’s growth. They built our canals, a way to plan ahead to retain that rare surface water enabling civilization here. The Maricopa chose their leaders by looking to see which village was the strongest, best able to survive. Sometimes it was heriditary, sometimes not. It was a form of democracy by voting with your feet where conditions were most amenable to life. Power from the people in that sense has ancient roots here.
Let us be persistent and do whatever it takes to make all the voices heard, in Maricopa and across this nation. The longer I think about it, the more I believe we must make Maricopa matter, and demand this never happen again.
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