Archive
How Can We Serve Our Public Servants?
Back in my 20s, I had a modest dream: By my 40s, I hoped, I'd be able to pay off my student debt. I’d even give some of my hard-earned money to my mom and rent a nice apartment. Maybe I'd get a dog, too. And I wanted to do it while making a difference for...
Kraft’s Mac and Cheese: Less Toxic, Still Bad
Kraft made news the other day with this announcement: Beginning next year, its macaroni and cheese will no longer contain artificial preservatives or colors. That’s nice. One of the favorite foods of American kids will more closely resemble something that actually...
Wall Street Banks on Buying the Democrats’ Love
Wall Street arrogance seems to be accelerating even faster than our infinite cosmos is expanding. It's not enough that the greed and illegal acts of giant financial conglomerates crashed our economy, nor that they demanded and got a full taxpayer bailout. It's not...
Mountaintop Decapitation
The Great Fountain-Pen Robbery
Even the word "greed" isn’t negative enough to characterize the all-out assault on workers by today's corporate elite. From offshoring jobs to busting unions, and from slashing wages to looting pensions, avaricious executives and wealthy investors are taking...
In OtherWords: April 22, 2015
This week in OtherWords, I debunk an argument against fossil fuel divestment by pointing out that it can boost financial gains and Khalil Bendib chimes in with a related dinosaur cartoon. Do you want to make sure you don’t miss the latest from OtherWords?...
Sister Rice Goes After the Bomb
Last March, Sister Megan Rice stood before a federal court in Cincinnati. Along with her companions Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, the 85-year-old Catholic nun was appealing a serious conviction. Their charge? Sabotaging the "national defense." Sabotage, which...
Loaded Language
I couldn’t find a hotel room in Nashville when I visited for my brother’s wedding. Maybe that was for the best. I had a longer commute to the clearing in the woods where the wedding would happen the next day, but at least I kept a safe distance from the NRA’s...
Greening Spring Cleaning
What’s that smell in the air? It's fresh and floral — and probably filled with formaldehyde. It's spring-cleaning time once again. And in the name of cleanliness, people everywhere are dousing their homes and workplaces with dangerous, even toxic, cleaning products....
That Whiff of Hypocrisy
Baseball has spring training, football's got its training camps. But for a political junkie like me, nothing compares with the opening of the presidential primary season. Some 19 candidates, give or take, recently swarmed a Republican forum in New Hampshire in search...
