http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog Jennifer Hodgdon's personal blog / Blog personal de Jennifer Hodgdon Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:59:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en World leaders are finally realizing that we're facing a food crisis: they're currently having a meeting in Rome to discuss it, and UN chief Ban Ki-moon recently stated that we need to grow 50% more food by 2030 to satisfy needs (I believe this is a conservative estimate). This is ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/publicpolicy/food_global_warming/ I have been thinking a lot lately about economic growth. It seems like the news media, and practically everyone else, assumes that if the economy is growing, it's a good thing, and if it isn't, something terrible is occurring. This assumption has been bothering me for a while, and I ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/publicpolicy/economic-growth/ I recently read a book called The Middle of Everywhere, by Mary Pipher. In it, Ms. Pipher shares stories of refugees who were settled in Lincoln, Nebraska over the past 10-20 years. Many of the stories Ms. Pipher shared in her book were somewhat familiar to me -- I've traveled a ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/peace-justice/refugees_immigrant/ On February 11th, 2008, over 1000 people from over 70 countries, all of whom now live in the state of Washington, visited Olympia (our state capitol) for the second annual Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Day. I decided to take a day off work and attend. Here are some observations from ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/publicpolicy/olympia_lobbyist/ The city that I live in (Shoreline, a suburb just north of Seattle) closed two elementary schools this year, and the city of Seattle has also been talking about closing schools, in both cases because the number of children enrolled in school has declined. Yet the population of both Seattle ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/publicpolicy/housing_schools/ I finally saw Michael Moore's film Sicko. It's very scary. The main point of the film is that in the U.S., even if you have "good" health insurance, you have no guarantee that you will get good health care. This is because hospitals and doctors make health care decisions based ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/publicpolicy/health_care_us/ In my volunteer work (teaching English to adult immigrants and Spanish-English interpreting), I come in contact with a lot of immigrants -- some are here legally, and some are not. Illegal immigration has also been in the news a lot lately, so I find myself thinking about the subject frequently. ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/peace-justice/illegal-immigration/ Lately, I have been hearing a lot of politicians promoting biofuels, mainly biodiesel and bioethanol. They seem to believe that biofuels are going to play a major role in solving our upcoming energy crisis, but logic and science do not support that idea. I gave a few reasons in my ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/publicpolicy/biofuels_not_sensible/ In my last article, I wrote about poverty, especially among people who have jobs. Many of the workers living in poverty around the world are working in the clothing industry; most of the clothing available for sale in the US is produced in sweatshops (which we can define as places ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/peace-justice/sweatshop_alternatives/ I have some more thoughts as a follow-up to my previous post about poverty and the economy -- about solutions to the problem of poverty. First, the basics. Since poverty occurs when there is an imbalance between earnings and the cost of living, to move an individual out of poverty, ... http://poplarware.com/HodgBlog/peace-justice/more-poverty-economy/