Four Hundred Thousand Reasons to Vote

They say that the definition of a political gaffe is a politician caught telling the truth. Recently, former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson got in trouble for speaking his mind about Social Security. Simpson, the co-chair of President Barack Obama’s task force on...

Rattling Democracy in Latin America

In late September, tear gas and the smoke from burning tires filled the air as Ecuador’s president was held hostage in a police hospital. For people throughout the Americas, Ecuador’s attempted coup brought flashbacks of the June 2009 coup in Honduras....

The Faces of Government

I had dinner the other night with one of those villains, a “faceless bureaucrat” working as a wildlife biologist for the Department of the Interior in northern Florida. A college friend of my wife, she had spent many years in research on endangered...

Confronting the Reality of Climate Change

It got so hot in downtown Los Angeles the other day that the thermometer broke. The National Weather Service’s device hit 113 degrees at about noon (the highest temp ever recorded in LA), then just quit. Climate change hawks were quick to seize on this as...
Save the Billionaires’ Tax Loophole

Save the Billionaires’ Tax Loophole

Look out. They’re angry. Foaming-at-the-mouth angry. And they’re lashing out, saying they won’t take it anymore. As one of their leaders angrily cried, “It’s a war.” Indeed–they’re on the move to take their country back....