We go into the third issue of New Times Always! buoyed by the response to issues one and two. The analytics that web publishers live by tell us not only that a goodly number have found the site but many are staying with it for a considerable time. Keep up the good work.
Issue three has a heavy concentration on politics, complicated by the changes in world’s environments brought on by the Trump administration and the reaction from left, right and abroad. The new President has managed to force most other news off the front pages and continues to shock with a twitter storm that has transformed communication to a high pitch and the lowest denomination. And then there’s health care.
Happily, life goes on, and we touch bases from coast to coast and around the globe, with at least a glimpse into outer space. We like it all but call particular attention to California’s success with solar power, a beginning conversation about capitalism, the reminder of how bad the riots were 50 years ago (while many of their root causes continue), a breakaway iceberg’s evidence of climate change, mayors who who are beginning to look presidential, and how some teenagers are pushing back against social media. Page three continues to balance the equation on the lighter, brighter and less urgent side.
As always, we encourage readers to like us on Facebook, as well as with friends and family and anywhere else that comes to mind. There’s still plenty of room before our cup runs over.
Don West for New Times Always!
How Trump and GOP failed on a health-care bill
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Pity the poor Affordable Care Act, assailed from all sides throughout its existence, and pity the Republican party, which has used its might and main to effect its demise. Pity too the country’s health care system, the victim of political malfeasance in avoiding a better way. This was written before the next shoe dropped in this saga, but we go to press with the most recent episode knowing things will inevitably change. We’ll stay tuned if you will.
Trump leaves G-20 leaders fearing the future
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A number of stories are bundled into the next two segments, all adding to an emerging conclusion that it’s Donald Trump against the world. The first recounts the fearful ending of the G-20 summit, when the world’s leading economic nations came together in search of unity. The United States ended up the odd man out on climate change and enough other issues to provoke Germany’s Andrea Merkel to say that Europe must henceforth go it alone, and France’s Emmanuel Macron to declare the world had never been so divided. Political observer David Gergen came to the most sober conclusion: that the President of the U.S. is no longer considered the leader of the world.
Gergen: President “no longer world leader”
California shows the way on solar power
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California has been so successful in developing solar power that it ended up paying Arizona to take some of its excess capacity (which was threatening to overload its power lines). It would be doing even better if its own state politicians would get out of the way, but they’re still trying to support existing utilities.
Big oil comes out against coal and nuclear
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And in another part of the haves against the have nots world, the American Petroleum Institute, that industry’s strongest lobbying force, is now coming out against both nuclear power and solar, and in the process is trying to make sure that President Trump’s allegiance with coal won’t detract from its own ambitions for natural gas.
Everyone’s talking about “the future of work”
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Work, that activity that makes things happen and many try to avoid, is now coming under increasing scrutiny by thinkers, writers and talkers concerned that advances in technology and particularly artificial intelligence will have a negative effect on employment and the economy. Their arguments echo those of earlier generations fearful for the manufacture of buggy whips, but they can’t be dismissed as easily.
This new teen trend is taking on social media
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We end page one on a positive note, the possibility that the younger among us may mount a counterattack on the negativity of social media as purveyors of “messages of hate and a forum for bullying.” It’s called Wholesome Memes and is beginning among teenagers, one of whose Instagram account now has 22,000 followers to its messages of goodwill, and across the internet as a whole more than a million are involved.