Archive
What Would the Founders Do?
The soldiers who fought the Revolutionary War were our first veterans, the only cohort of U.S. warriors who took up arms to create rather than defend a country. If they lost, it meant treason. Having won, the nation treated them with a special reverence, right?...
A Free Fruit-for-All
I got back from the airport just in time for the last half hour of Cider Fest, one of the Bloomington Community Orchard's large public events. This publicly owned and volunteer-run organic orchard occupies a single acre. Entering its fifth year, it has become an...
The 0.01 Percent’s ‘I Reap All’ Accounts
Do you remember when Mitt Romney's IRA made headlines during his failed 2012 presidential campaign? That outsized retirement stash estimated at between $20 and $102 million probably led President Barack Obama to propose limiting the buildup of IRA values. It turns out...
Denton Tells Big Oil to Frack Off
The University of North Texas, best known for its top-notch jazz program and sometimes for its "Mean Green" football team, might soon become known as Frack U. UNT (where I went to college back in the Paleocene Epoch) and the good people of the surrounding city of...
A Difficult Season
My brother would have turned 29 the other day. Thus begins the season of difficult anniversaries. Six years ago, my baby bro turned 23. It was 2008, a week before Barack Obama's first presidential election. Hope and change were in the air. I had a new job and a new...
Driving Government Out of Business
Republican operative Grover Norquist used to quip about shrinking government to the point where it would get small enough to drown in the bathtub. You probably thought he was kidding. His joke could be on us all soon enough. Pollsters say the Republican Party is...
The GOP’s Sharp Teeth
Speech for Sale
When five Supreme Court justices decreed that corporations are entitled to full free speech rights in our elections and that corporate money is a form of speech that can't be restricted, they produced a nightmare tsunami of corporate cash that is now drowning our...
In OtherWords: October 22, 2014
This week in OtherWords, Jill Richardson suggests that the amount of sugar Americans eat is way scarier than the slim chance they'll get Ebola while I ask whether Halloween chocolate is too cheap. Do you want to make sure you don’t miss the latest from OtherWords?...
Don’t Ask the Pentagon Where Its Money Goes
President Barack Obama proudly signed the law that repealed the Pentagon's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, freeing lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans (although not trans people) to openly serve in the military four years ago. But when it comes to budgeting, the...
