8/15/2023

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            As you know I am the odd ball who reads the news. That is, I actually put my eyes on paragraphs & read several of them. It saddens me that most folks have switched to social media to get informed. Now that we have AI to contend with, who knows what’s going to happen?

            Those of us who do read the news are being inundated with info about the escapades of POTUS 45. Your trip to Milwaukee today has been eclipsed! To make matters worse, we have fewer local papers to distract us from the national news & local papers tend to be owned by the likes of Gannett & McClatchy, so even the Milwaukee papers aren’t covering your visit to Ingeteam today.

            The only article of interest to me in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was about how teacher turnover in WI is at a 15-year high. It’s especially high for Black teachers with 23.4% of them leaving their schools in the past year. Perhaps it’s time for you to do more than just tweet, “It's time American public school teachers got a raise.”

            The national news DID cover the landslide in the jade mining area of the Kachin State of Burma where at least 30 people are missing. The junta would prefer the incident be kept on the down-low since they make $$ off the enterprise. Mining has devastated the local environment, especially the Uru Stream. Since Chinese tend to be jade consumers, it’s not clear what you can do, beyond continuing to ask questions & call attention to the junta’s indifference to the welfare of the citizens of Burma. Keep pressuring General Min Aung Hlaing to accept humanitarian aid so the folks affected by monsoons get the food & medicine they so desperately need.

            BYBS,