Highlights This Month
In Lieu of More Stuff
In the face of climate change and energy challenges, what creative ways are you finding to forge healthy and durable lives and communities? Send submissions—five hundred words or fewer—to Orion, 187 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230, or via e-mail to moa@orionsociety.org. Submissions become property of Orion.
by Susan Donohoe, Dedham, Massachusetts, Orion magazine
Conscious Consuming is a nonprofit in the Boston area formed to help people get in touch with their values to better prioritize time, money, and material things. Americans are largely defined as consumers: we work long hours so that we have money to buy all the goodies we want. We now have a negative personal savings rate and less vacation time than any other industrialized country. We produce four to five pounds of garbage per person every single day. Consumption is the elephant in every living room, and most environmental organizations don’t want to talk about it for fear of alienating their constituents.
Somehow the ability to throw things away to buy bigger, better, newer models became a status symbol in our country, and buying secondhand or not buying at all became a vision of poverty rather than thrift or conservation. Yet most religious traditions advocate sharing over hoarding, community over commodities. Studies show that after the basics (food, shelter, clothing) are taken care of, human happiness ratings do not increase as wealth increases.
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RJ Matson
 Vancouver couple show autism, romance can coexist
By Erin Middlewood, The Columbian
 Emilia Murry Ramey and Jody John Ramey have co-written a book titled "Autistics' Guide to Dating." In the book, the married couple reflect on their personal experiences and give advice on relationships. Zachary Kaufman / AP
Emilia Murry Ramey and Jody John Ramey met through a mutual friend. They soon discovered they had more in common than their friend. Both were students at Portland State University. And both have autism.
The Vancouver couple are among the estimated 1.5 million Americans living with the effects of some degree of autism. Specifically, Emilia and Jody both have Asperger syndrome, marked by social awkwardness and a lack of understanding of conventional social rules. As if dating weren't hard enough.
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Clinton, Obama, Health Insurance
The difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.
Paul Krugman, New York Times
 Paul Krugman
The principal policy division between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama involves health care. It’s a division that can seem technical and obscure — and I’ve read many assertions that only the most wonkish care about the fine print of their proposals.
But as I’ve tried to explain in previous columns, there really is a big difference between the candidates’ approaches. And new research, just released, confirms what I’ve been saying: the difference between the plans could well be the difference between achieving universal health coverage — a key progressive goal — and falling far short.
Specifically, new estimates say that a plan resembling Mrs. Clinton’s would cover almost twice as many of those now uninsured as a plan resembling Mr. Obama’s — at only slightly higher cost.
Let’s talk about how the plans compare.
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21st Century Transit For America
A Big Step: U.S. PIRG is calling on Congress to double the federal investment in the nation’s public transit systems.
U.S. PIRG
 A new train line installation in Texas
With debate underway over the next multi-billion dollar federal transportation bill, U.S. PIRG has called on Congress to double the nation’s investment in public transit.
“We have a chance to help bring America’s public transit systems into the 21st century,” said Phineas Baxandall, a U.S. PIRG policy analyst with expertise on budget issues. “With a 21st century system, we can take a big dent out of our worsening traffic jams, our nation’s oil dependence, and global warming.”
Doubling the federal investment in public transit would provide funds to accommodate record numbers of transit riders with reliable service and could move promising transit projects off the drawing board.
Since 1956, when the Interstate Highway Act was passed, state and federal governments have invested nine times more on highways than on public transportation. The Interstate Highway System was completed decades ago, but our transportation system is still biased toward building new highways.
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Thank 8 Republican Legislators Who Stood Up to Gov. Pawlenty on Transportation
Discovery Institute’s unintelligent designers have no scruples
By Lee Salisbury, Axis of Logic
This past Saturday (February 23) one of the C-Span book reviews featured Dr. John West’s book “Darwin Day In America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science.” Dr. West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute argued that the domination of science in American society has led to the corruption of our morals.
I must admit my astonishment at West’s proposition. He reminds me of the preacher who proclaimed, “You don’t need to read nuttin but the bible.” Dr. West verges on suggesting ignorance and stupidity produce good morals. When talking about the theory of evolution that is essentially his position. The Discovery Institute’s mission is to fabricate reasons to deny the 150 years of research that stands behind the theory of evolution because it contradicts a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Has Dr. West ever heard of Galileo?
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