Archive
This Global Ruling Is Just Not Cool
They say that if you get up in the morning and swallow a live toad, nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day. Well, we Americans have just been fed a live toad by the World Trade Organization. Last May, the WTO — an oligarchic, autocratic governing...
Why Isn’t the Media Feeling the Bern?
Let's go to the scoreboard to see who's winning the exciting presidential election media coverage game. The Tyndall Report, a non-partisan media monitoring firm that has been tracking the nightly news broadcasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC, found that Trump is tromp, tromp,...
In OtherWords: December 30, 2015
Before 2015, we never had the privilege of seeing Donald Trump — a man who goes to great lengths to never muss up his hair — hawking baseball caps and becoming the GOP front-runner. Or watching Martin Shkreli — the ultimate legal drug kingpin — get busted for fleecing...
The GOP’s Pro-Corporate Prescription
The conventional wisdom in Washington is that tax breaks for corporations lead to economic growth. Tax assistance for working families, on the other hand, may help them make ends meet, but it doesn’t have much impact on the economy. The conventional wisdom has it...
The Days of Lying to Protect Killer Cops Are Numbered
Right around Thanksgiving, the city of Chicago released a dash-cam video showing the cold-blooded murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald at the hands of a Chicago Police Department officer. The very next day, the Chicago Urban League — supported by my organization, the...
Broadband Rates Are Too Damn High
As the digital revolution hurtles ahead, low-income communities across the United States aren’t reaping many of its benefits. The less you make, the less likely it is that you’re hooked up at home. This is especially true if you lack a high school diploma. And the...
Martin Shkreli: My Person of the Year
It’s time — past time, really — to name the person of the year. (TIME Magazine does it. Why not me?) There were many worthy candidates in 2015: the Pope, the Donald, and Luke Skywalker, to name just a few. But only one symbolized the spirit of the year. I speak, of...
Enstrictly Speaking, 2016 Could Be a Trailrazer
My 9-year-old daughter hunkers down for hours with the Warriors books. She’s on her fifth run through the dozens of tomes in this series that our local libraries keep handy about clans of cats who want nothing to do with people. Poring over them does wonders for my...
The GOP Candidates Know Nothing about Syria
Like many political animals, I was glued to the latest Republican presidential debate. For the most part, there were no surprises: Donald Trump railed against Muslims, Chris Christie lamented that the NSA can’t intercept Americans’ phone calls and emails as easily as...
When Life Makes Resolutions for You
Last year, I didn’t make any New Year's resolutions. But it appears that life made them for me. Two changes occurred in my life, and I responded. In retrospect, 2015 produced more personal growth than perhaps any other year of my life. The first change occurred...
