I got a degree in sociology, didn't read much fiction in college, and I was a pretty political, left-wing type of guy. I wanted to do some kind of work in social change and make things better for the poor man, and I was very romantic and passionate a...
Poetry is a lousy form of activism; it doesn't really change much. And maybe we can point to one or two historical times when a poem has started a revolution or a rebellion or an uprising, but it doesn't happen that often, and if you put the number o...
You can graph human evolution, which is mostly a straight line, but we do get better and change over time, and you can graph technological evolution, which is a line that's going straight up. They are going to intersect each other at some point, and ...
Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence - in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement - wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change th...
Statistics vary, but in less than seven years there won't be a single cell left in any of our bodies that's the same as it is today. This means that any human being who 'wants' to change is like a mountain river wanting to reach the valley floor. It'...
We have to be bold in our national ambitions. First, we must win the fight against poverty within the next decade. Second, we must improve moral standards in government and society to provide a strong foundation for good governance. Third, we must ch...
Each time we cooperate with God, we take one more giant step forward. Because when God asks us to change, it means that He always has something better to give us - more freedom, greater joy, and greater blessings.
I think how veterans are treated in our country is an abomination. We don't have the draft any more, which is why so many soldiers come from working-class - rather than middle- or high-income families. Those wealthier families aren't affected, so the...
When New Labour came to power, we got a Right-wing Conservative government. I came to realise that voting Labour wasn't in Scotland's interests any more. Any doubt I had about that was cast aside for ever when I saw Gordon Brown cosying up to Margare...
After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosio...
You bet every member of Congress who votes for this bill ought to read it, read it thoroughly, and understand that what we're looking at here amounts to nothing more than a government takeover of our health care economy, paid for with nearly a trilli...
We are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would resp...
Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government...
You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job, but it doesn't pay as much. And so, that's what's happened to us is that we have put in so much entitlement into our government, that...
I forget what the relevant American rate is, but I can tell you that our goal is to have a combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate of no more than 25 percent. We're on target to do that by 2012. We will have significantly - by a significant ma...
Want to depose the government of a poor country with resources? Want to bash Muslims? Want to build support for American military interventions around the world? Want to undermine governments that are raising their people up from poverty because they...
There are myriad government programs out there to help small businesses. Few people use them effectively. The maze of information makes it difficult for any one person to understand it all, which often leads politicians, and citizens, too, to call fo...
I don't think it should be a surprise when we're talking about energy and trying to have more home-grown energy, be less reliant on foreign oil when you look at our health care that we're trying to get more affordable health care, that these are goin...
My mother-in-law, Nanny, spent her working years as a bookkeeper at a medical office in Columbus, Ohio. Like so many Americans, she worked hard and paid into Medicare, knowing that one day she could count on having high-quality health care when she n...
I think we can see how blessed we are in America to have access to the kind of health care we do if we are insured, and even if uninsured, how there is a safety net. Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care ....
I think that we should take the tragedy that happened in Newtown and have a full comprehensive dialogue about all issues, whether it has to do with mental health, whether it has to do with the social decline of our young people and some of the things...
