Archive
A Prescription for Treating Runaway CEO Pay
You've surely heard many things about the Affordable Care Act, including the website headaches that embarrassed the Obama administration during the new program's rollout. But you probably didn't realize that when you pay your premium today, you can rest assured that...
Greasing the Path to Military Intervention
What explains the never-ending justifications for U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts? In a word: oil. Sure, President Barack Obama may have dropped food and water on that desolate Iraqi mountaintop out of humanitarian concern for the persecuted Yazidi...
Perry Hams It Up
Lawyers will tell you that any good prosecutor could convince a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Well, meet that ham sandwich: Governor Rick Perry. He's a real ham — only not as smart. A Texas grand jury indicted Perry, charging the Republican with official abuse...
The Case for Making Foreign Aid a Two-Way Street
What if I told you there was a lot in Africa that was going right? Now, I don't mean programs that are successfully handing out food aid, treating malaria, or preventing elephant poaching, although I'm sure some of those are succeeding too. I mean intrinsic parts of...
Dr. Spoilsport’s CEO Treatment
Clamping Down on the Labor Extortion Racket
This Labor Day, you can mull some good news about American jobs for a change. Take the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour — please! That poverty pay is a shameful stain on our extremely rich nation. But don't count on Washington, D.C. to lift our wage floor....
Ferguson Exposes the Creeping Militarization of Police Forces
The tragedies unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, are doubly infuriating.First, there is the obvious outrage of yet another unarmed black teenager being stopped by one of the town's white police officers as he was walking to his grandmother's home. A scuffle...
Racism Goes Postal
In OtherWords: August 13, 2014
This week in OtherWords, William A. Collins and I explain why most efforts to block the spread of green energy are losing and Ron Carver reflects on how Mississippi has (and hasn't) changed half a century after the Freedom Summer. Our longtime columnist Donald Kaul...
As Mississippi Moves on, a New Struggle Arises
Fifty years ago, shortly after the Ku Klux Klan abducted and murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, I was sitting in one of Starkville, Mississippi's few black-owned cafes when Police Chief Thomas Josey stormed in and...
