I miss him. It's as simple as that. No long, rambling stories recounted, no wisps of nostalgia or idle memories rekindled. I simply miss my brother. As ALS Awareness Month comes to an end in the United States and begins in both Canada and France (les Journées d'Action), I have decided to join together with other voices and help spread awareness of this destructive, devastating disease. I lost my brother Michael to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease after the famous New York Yankee whose career and life were cut short by this terrible illness. ALS is a progressive degenerative motor neuron disease characterized by muscle atrophy, weakness leading to the near or complete loss of motor function and mobility, increasing difficulty in swallowing and breathing and eventually leading to a complete shutdown of the body. To put it in simple terms, the connection between brain and muscles dies, the messages for control no longer get through and involuntary muscle functions (beating heart, working lungs) slowly fade away. Unlike the more famous, long-term sufferers of ALS such as Stephen Hawking, my brother withered away from a rare form of this disease in a mere two years; and unlike Mr. Hawking who continued his brilliant career despite ALS, my brother was crippled by dementia as well. And although my father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, we suspect - and fear - that he, too, succumbed to the same rare strain of ALS as did his son. Much too often, as was our case, the disease swallows up the loved one both physically and mentally, allowing us, the family, barely the time to prepare financially, legally, emotionally or psychologically.

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As Elizabeth Warren says, "Nothing will ever replace the role of personal responsibility." Just as the FDA doesn't prevent overdoses, the point of consumer protection regulations isn't to come to the rescue of people who simply don't want to pay back the money they owe. But debt collection agencies have started using outrageous tactics to get payments on debt. These companies buy up bad debt from lenders -- credit card companies, phone companies, health care providers, you name it -- for cheap and then hunt down the money owed in order to turn a profit. And in doing so, some act more like organized crime than private businesses.

They harass consumers with threats and obscenities. Complaints about debt collectors filed with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency tasked with regulating these operations, rose by about 17% in 2010, which is nearly three times the number of complaints filed in 2002. They account for 27% of all those lodged with the FTC. And of the 54,147 consumers complaining to state level authorities in South Carolina, 4,182 said debt collectors had threatened violence. In 2005, 8,000 consumers told the FTC that debt collectors had used obscene or profane language, according to "Up To Our Eyeballs." But it's not always just about outright harassment. It's also a mind game. A former debt collector has anonymously blogged about some of the tactics he used, describing how he would "sound educated enough to perform some sort of legal action" by dropping four important phrases: office, file, client, and flat refusal to pay. This careful use of language was often enough to scare consumers into coughing up some money.

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Judging by how Oklahoma voted in the recent election, one might conclude that despite its tiny Muslim population, Oklahoma was on the verge of becoming an Islamic caliphate in Middle America. The reality is of course far different. Oklahoma State Question 755, which passed, asked voters whether state courts should be forbidden "from considering or using Sharia Law." Similar legislation is being considered in Tennessee, and Louisiana recently became the first state to pass several bills banning international law from its courts. Although the Louisiana bills didn't mention shariah explicitly, they were apparently motivated at least in part by a similar distaste for Muslims and their religious law, and a desire to "protect" constitutional law. These constitutional law protectors appear, however, to be a little fuzzy on what constitutional law actually means, how it allows for various forms of religious arbitration and what the state can and cannot do to regulate religious freedoms.

In the discussion and debate surrounding Question 755, supporters in search of an example where the bogeyman shariah was permitted inside American courtrooms kept pointing to a New Jersey case where the court denied a restraining order to a woman who was sexually assaulted by her then-husband. The judge ruled that the husband did not have a "criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault" her as the husband was merely under the impression that he was exercising his prerogative as a husband under Islamic law. What's rarely reported, however, is that the decision was promptly overturned on appeal because the application of shariah, or the "cultural defense," conflicted with civil law.

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One of the most amazing things about the trade war we are fighting is that the U. S. government often does not appear to know we are even in a war. But if you go to any manufacturing town in this country, and look at the empty storefronts and the broken down plants, talk to a taxi driver or a Dunkin Donut clerk who used to work in the local factory for triple his current wage, it is clear we are in a war and it is one we are losing.

First, let's be clear. It is not that manufacturing has left the planet earth. That is basically the line of the apologists for our failed trade policy -- that there is some kind of natural shift to a post-manufacturing economy. But that is simply not the case -- it is just that the jobs and the plants have left the United States. We have lost 8 million manufacturing jobs in the last several decades and are now at about 11.7 million. But China has over 100 million people employed in manufacturing. If we had a policy which resulted in recovering even a fraction of these jobs from China we would be showing long term manufacturing job growth, not decline. Similarly, our trade deficit in high technology goods is steadily growing. In 2009 we had a $56 billion trade deficit in these goods, up from a $37 billion deficit in 2006, and a positive balance of $5 billion in 2000. It's not that these goods are not being manufactured any more, it's just that they are not being manufactured here.

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