Venezuela Under Siege 

What would you do if you were a socialist who had to manage a capitalist economy in crisis? Or an environmentalist who had to govern a country whose main export was oil and whose national budget was thus subject to its massive price volatility? Or an ecosocialist torn between the reality of people who are long accustomed to fuel prices kept unsustainably low by implicit energy subsidies and the urgent need to stop smugglers smuggling subsidized fuels out of the country and selling it at much higher prices  in neighboring countries? There are no easy answers, are there? 

Columbus s-CREW-ed

“Save the Crew” fanatics are cheering and celebrating that the soccer team is “saved” and staying in Columbus. Their website touts the wonderful “bright new stadium” to be located to the west of the Arena District. But at what cost is this victory?

The original Crew stadium cost $28.5 million, opening in 1999. History-making in its design – as the first soccer-specific stadium built in the United States – its capacity was listed at 19,968 seats last year. Average attendance was 12,447 for the 2018 season, lowest among Major League Soccer (MLS) teams.  After taxpayers refused to build a hockey arena and a soccer stadium with public money, billionaire Lamar Hunt had footed the bill for the original Crew stadium.

As the new year begins and the old year ends, we begin another transition in our lives. We make our individual resolutions, our resolutions as couples and as a family. Some of us no longer make resolutions because we have failed to keep, meet or come close to achieving our goals.

To make a resolution is to make a firm decision to do or not to do something. When we make resolutions, we take an action, or at least we say we are going to take an action, to solve a problem, a dispute, or contentious matter. We hope to have “peaceful” resolutions with others so that we can come to a satisfactory agreement, one that will benefit both parties involved, and if necessary, to the benefit of others that we advocate for or who will also benefit from the resolution of the problem.

As I write this article, our government is trying to resolve the issue of building “a wall” that the President of the USA wants to build at the price of five million dollars. Americans are looking at a government shutdown for their new year in 2019.  Both the House and the Senate put the battle to rest on December 27 until New Year’s Eve. 

"Anyone who walks into a Huntington [Bank] branch should feel welcomed. … We hold ourselves accountable to the highest ethical standards in how we operate, hire and train colleagues, and interact with the communities we have the privilege of serving." – Statement emailed to CBS MoneyWatch from Huntington Bank on 12/19/18.

Bah Humbug!

Huntington National Bank (HNB) doesn’t discriminate against or mistreat the communities they serve … yeah, right. There’s one distinct group of citizens they don’t want. Those customers risk having their lives turned upside down.

August 17, 2018 seemed like any other summertime Friday. Chores and yard work awaited. The doorbell rang. The mailman handed me a pen to sign a certified letter from Huntington Bank.

Mind you, I was a Huntington Bank customer for 42 years. Wedding checks were deposited into my account as was Social Security. The account paid for kindergarten crayons and college tuition. Never an overdraft or bounced check. By any banking standard, I was a model customer.

Herbalism is the people’s medicine – allowing people to grow medicine alongside their food and take charge of their health. Herbalists Without Borders (HWB) People’s Clinics give people access to help and refers them to ongoing help when needed. It is the holistic ER that so many need but have not been able to access before.

What is HWB? It is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that focuses on delivering heath care and food justice worldwide through a fifteen specific projects: they deliver trauma training for practitioners, run community herb apothecaries and people's clinics, and they practice international borderless medicine (similar to Doctors Without Frontiers in places of famine or war).

HWB hosts medicinal seed saving projects and community gardens, have a veterans’ resiliency holistic clinic in Washington D.C., and run the Keepers of Herbal Traditions Project in Puerto Rico.