The Tax protest - April 15

[liamona]

The other problem new parents face is society's messages about what constitutes good parenting, which if followed can lead to a big cash outlay:

1) You need to see a doctor and have your baby in the hospital (which means you need to have good health insurance). Big Pharma and its minions really want you to follow this advice, so that it can have a patient for life.

2) Your baby needs all sorts of (expensive) paraphernalia like her own room, a brand new crib, bottles and diapers. All sorts of organizations promote this view, and downplay or negate the advantages and the low costs associated with breastfeeding and cosleeping with your baby, using cloth diapers and/or the Elimination Communication diaper-free technique.

3) You need to have a big car to lug your baby/kid along—small, economical cars aren't as safe, doncha know!

4) You need to live in an expensive school district with good schools.

When I was pregnant, I fortuitously came across a site called UnhinderedLiving.com. It really opened my eyes to alternatives to the Parenting Matrix.

It's full of interesting articles like "Understanding the Problems of Controlled, Hindered Living," "Birth without Coercion," and "Dispelling our Institutional Myths."

[Brutha]

Unless we start getting candidates who are truly chosen by the people, I'm thinking that the only way to change the system is to refuse to participate. Of course that only works if enough people take the same approach, and I don't see mainstream society embracing this logic anytime soon.

Actually it doesn't change the system.
Congress had it's 9% approval rating in the last session and that didn't change the way congress works much.

Politicians certainly prefer to have a lot of voters in election but in the end it's not essential for them.
Maybe you could get the system to break down completely through refusing to participate but that wouldn't result in power going to the general public but to those people who manage to rise up in the chaos of the break down.