Archive
The Real Public Health Threat
As airlines, cruise ships, and hospitals cope with waves of Ebola jitters, I'm wondering whether the panic the deadly virus is inducing will distort Halloween traditions this year. No, I'm not talking about Ebola-related costumes. There are real precautions we must...
Paying for Cheap Chocolate
One Halloween, my husband persuaded our kids to give away most of the candy they'd just collected while trick-or-treating. They were preschoolers and the house we were renting then had previously drawn teens with haunted tours. We'd run out of candy when a stream of...
Down the Hole
Off to War We Go
Here we go again — into yet another war in a tumultuous swath of the world we still don't comprehend. For a preview of what we're stepping into in Iraq and Syria, let's remember Afghanistan. In the yesteryear of the Cheney-Bush regime, the promise was that our Afghan...
In OtherWords: October 15, 2014
This week in OtherWords, Peter Certo weighs in on President Obama's Iraq record and Michael Brune says the climate movement prompted Facebook and other tech heavyweights to "unfriend" the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Do you want to make sure you don’t...
Obama’s Dumb War
If Barack Obama owes his presidency to one thing, it was the good sense he had back in 2002 to call the Iraq War what it was: "dumb." Now, with scarcely a whisper of debate, Obama has become the fourth consecutive U.S. president to bomb Iraq — and in fact has outdone...
Unfriending ALEC
Exactly 54 days after Lisa B. Nelson started her job as the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), she got some bad news from a major supporter: The tech giant Google wanted out of its relationship with ALEC. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt...
Here Come the Rain and Drought
What is it about natural disasters and irony? Just as local authorities in Detroit were denying thousands of people access to running water, the bankrupt city experienced an epic downpour. More than 4.5 inches of rain pounded Motown in mid-August, causing $1.2 billion...
America’s Grand Fortunes Go Overboard
Imagine yourself part of the typical American family. Your household would have, the Federal Reserve reported in September, a net worth of $81,200. That's not a whole lot of money. But half of America's households would actually have less wealth than you do. Now...
Walk Softly and Carry a Big Beer
OK, that's it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. The avarice of corporate power is getting personal. I'm talking about beer, the nourishing nectar of a civilized society. Since my teen years, I've done extensive consumer research on the brewer's art, from the full array of ales...
