My rants would have to be categorized because there are so many of them, but I believe the ordinary men and women of this world have to go back to fighting for their rights. I have two petitions running on www.petitiononline.com. The first one is an effort to break the corporate stranglehold in retail. At the end of WWII about 80 percent of retail was still family owned. Today the opposite is true, with around 80 percent being corporate owned. Sure, we can vote with our wallets, but in some segments of the retail market the big players (think not only Wal-Mart but Walgreen's, Borders Books and even Jiffy Lube) have saturated the market place so thoroughly that most patrons have no choice but to go there. One of the last independent pharmacies in this area closed a few weeks ago, and at this point I decided it was time to renew my energies in this area. There are plenty of corporate "bad guys" and a few do get comeuppances, but we need to go further.

Another thing is that we are losing a lot of our rights, as well as so many jobs being outsourced. President Obama has promised that he will end this debacle of tax breaks going to such companies, and hope he succeeds. There is also so much snooping that no one can tell me that blacklisting doesn't still exists. For example, if a prospective applicant admits that he likes to read Playboy magazine, he is very often disqualified for jobs. To me this is every bit as discriminatory as being denied due to race or religion. This will continue until the American public decides to speak up and once again beging bucking the system as they did in the 60's. I wonder if the folks who dumped the tea in Boston harbor are turning over in their graves.