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In OtherWords: May 20, 2015
This week in OtherWords, Donald Kaul sizes up Jeb Bush's me-too presidential aspirations and Sam Pizzigati says that the richest Americans now have more money than they can prudently invest. Do you want to make sure you don’t miss the latest from OtherWords?...
The Latest Victim in the War on Whistleblowers
Jeffrey Sterling recently stood before a judge as his sentence was read. The former CIA officer, the judge declared, would spend 42 months — that's three and half years — behind bars. The feds had convicted Sterling on nine felony charges, including seven counts of...
A Fossil-Fueled Fantasy
Newfangled carbon-capture power plants supposedly burn coal without poisoning the planet. They don’t. Extracting coal from the ground and disposing of its toxic byproducts makes a dirty mess no matter how it’s burned. But this “clean coal” ruse is conjuring up...
Zigging and Zagging Down a Slippery Slope
The Cutting Edge of Waste
Lots of folks in America today really need more money. Our kids, for starters. We ought to be investing in their futures, not stuffing them in overcrowded classrooms or forcing them to graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. And plenty of...
The War on Love
A lot of conservative religious leaders say people of faith are being "silenced" or "persecuted" here in the United States. They’ve sung that refrain for decades. It's especially common in their losing battle against the growing public support for the legal equality...
GOP Climate Denial Syndrome Sweeps Wisconsin
It's well-known that harsh climate conditions can mess with your mind — from cabin fever to heat delirium. But America is now experiencing an even more dangerous disease: Climaticus Non-Vocalism Extremism. This syndrome almost exclusively afflicts a narrow segment of...
Of Course Jeb Bush Would Have Invaded Iraq
Jeb Bush must have set some kind of record for political flip-flopping this month. "Knowing what we know now," he was asked — that Saddam Hussein didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction, for example — “would you have authorized the invasion" of Iraq? “I would've,”...
The GOP Bucks Teddy Roosevelt’s Legacy
Republican lawmakers celebrated Tax Day by voting to repeal the estate tax. If they get their way, the multi-millionaires and billionaires who fund their election campaigns will reap a huge tax break. First, some myth busting. The federal tax on inheritance only...
The High Cost of Low Taxes
Earlier this month, I arrived in San Diego following five days of driving across the country from Wisconsin. I pulled into my friend's driveway, brought my things inside, and went back to my car to park it on the street. Almost immediately, a cop's siren and flashing...
