Archive
Show Up on Thanksgiving or Get Fired
Most Americans — from the Obama family in the White House to my little family in Texas — will get a much-deserved break from work on Thanksgiving Day. But millions of others won't. Understandably, firefighters, police, and hospital workers will stay on the job. After...
The Fracking Rush Hits a Pothole
Ever heard of Bryan Sheffield? The baby-faced tycoon enjoyed a brief blast of fame a few months ago when he became one of those rare non-tech billionaires under 40. What ignited his rise to the ranks of Americans with money to burn? He owns a company called Parsley...
Does This Definition Make Me Look Rich?
How much income do America’s households take in? How much do they have left after taxes? Do federal taxes leave the nation less or more unequal? Questions don’t get much more basic than these. Or more complicated. How, for instance, do we define income? Anything...
Why You Should Meet Your Meat
A beloved organic farm in San Diego recently canceled a gourmet dinner it had planned to host. Guests had already paid $150 for a local, organic five-course meal prepared by several top chefs from the region. The dinner was called Death for Food. Whose death for whose...
The Elephant in the Room
Obama Pardons Two Republican Turkeys
Thanksgiving — a time of grace and family sharing — will get an extra bit of grace from the White House this year. Just as the president has done for the last 25 years, Barack Obama will grant clemency to two turkeys that otherwise could've become the main entrée for...
In OtherWords: November 19, 2014
This week in OtherWords, Jim Hightower, Ryan Alexander, William A. Collins, and I question the wisdom of the growing new wave of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Do you want to make sure you don’t miss the latest from OtherWords? Subscribe to our free...
Obama Jumps into the Net Neutrality Debate
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama added his voice to the nearly 4 million people who have urged the Federal Communications Commission to preserve the open Internet and protect free speech online. The president’s statement was a clear, concise directive on how...
The Pentagon’s Fiscal Forecast: Slushy
The Department of Defense is requesting a base budget of nearly half a trillion dollars for the coming year. That may sound like a lot of money. But that figure doesn’t even count the Pentagon’s multibillion-dollar slush fund — known to policy wonks as the "Overseas...
The Night the Cold War Ended
It was November 9, 1989. I was at the library at Northwestern University, putting the final touches on my first book — which happened to be about Soviet foreign policy. In a mad rush to beat my deadline, I dashed out and dropped the manuscript in the FedEx box just...
