As much as some of us would like to deny it, we all are in this thing called life together and while we may want to ignore a lot that is going on beyond the community you live in – knowing what is going on is very important for several reasons.

Everyone likes to have something to brag or complain about and what better than to do it about a news item from elsewhere that may truly effect your everyday living.

So – the NEWS TO KNOW 4 TODAY!!

THE NEWS TO KNOW > > The new administration is rolling back much of the environmental protection programs and protections.

Reason to Know > The rollbacks and the environmental denials by this administration can and will hurt the gains we have made in cleaning up our environment, like excess smog in our larger cities.  By thumbing our nose at things like wind, solar and water energy sources we are going to put us behind much of the rest of the world who are embracing reusable energy sources and cleaning up their country at the same time – look at a country like China, who has begun to pump a ton of money into reusable energy and cleaning up the smog in places like Bejing.

Rolling back these protections will cause us to see a rise in diseases that affect the lungs such as asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

Do you really want to see oil drilling equipment in our national parks?

If you have kids and grandkids you should be much concerned about the type of condition we want to leave the world that they need to survive on.

The NEWS TO KNOW > > Congress voted to repeal the internet privacy protections that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved.  This will allow internet providers to collect all sorts of personal information from your works on the internet and then sell that information to advertisers.

Reason to Know > This opens the door for anything and everything you do on the internet to be collected and sold, making money for someone you don’t even know.  It also opens the door for companies to collect data from your usage of a cell phone, security system, television entertainment – wherever you use technical data is thrown through the invisible air by wi-fi electronics.

The NEWS TO KNOW > > The new administration wants to make huge cuts in programs intended to help people while increasing the military budget by a sizable amount.  They want to do this, despite already outspending everyone else by a margin of 10-to-1 except for China.

Reason to Know > What is more important than education, the arts and taking care of the elderly, disabled and impoverished.

Has it occurred to anyone that maybe our expense on the military may come for spending, I mean we should and could be just as efficient with our military without spending as much if we just concentrate on dealing with those suppliers who gouge the government.

If I was making choices, it seems foolish to spend as much as we do on military, but yet not be able to take care of those who need the help.

Do you really want to lose programs like meals on wheels, special education funding, money for research on cures for a variety of health issues and cuts in spending on taking care of our infrastructure like the highways we count on for trips to vacation or family.

That’s it, just three bits of News to Know and the Reasons to Know it.  Do you have a news item which you may wonder why and if you should be concerned with?  If so then let us know and we will share our outlook.

For now, remember life out there can and will affect right here, so remember to find the news to know and know the news to know.

(Copyright@2017, CrossDove Writer)