Brian Lynch is a retired social worker who worked in the areas of adult mental health and child protection for many years. His work brought him into direct contact with all the major social issues of the day and many of our basic social institutions such as law enforcement, schools, hospitals, welfare agencies and private social service providers on both a local and state levels. This was a privileged vantage point for him to observe every level of human ecology, from the lives of individuals to the operations of government institutions. He was struck by the impact of state and federal policies on the lives of ordinary people, for better or worse. Political conflict and the clash of ideologies has real, observable and sometimes devastating consequences. He now writes and blogs on topics that relate to his social observations.