Archive
The High Cost of Cheap Shrimp
The Guardian recently revealed shocking results from a six-month investigation of the Thai fishing industry: Much of the shrimp sold in American and British supermarkets were produced with slave labor. While shrimp sold to U.S. consumers hail from a number of...
New Iraq Offensive Backfires
Republican opportunists hoping to score political points are hammering President Barack Obama with vitriolic criticism and blaming him for the latest upheaval in Iraq. So I was pleased when, finally, two Republicans spoke out loudly to deflect those partisan attacks....
Risky Business in Ukraine
Thanks to Iraq's latest woes, it's getting pretty hard to pay attention to all that unrest in the former Soviet Union. Remember those poor Ukrainians? All they want is to be independent and left alone. Or at least that's what they claim. In truth, many also want...
Let Them Eat Debt
50 Years after the Civil Rights Act, Discrimination Persists
July 2 marks the 50th anniversary of the day President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The landmark legislation outlawed discrimination and segregation based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. First introduced by President John...
Walker’s Money Mess
Scott Walker can't seem to run a clean campaign. He first won the governorship of Wisconsin in 2010 from his position as Milwaukee County executive. It turns out that some of his aides at the county job were doing campaign work for him on the taxpayers' dime. A total...
This Week in OtherWords: June 25, 2014
This week in OtherWords, Bob Lord reflects on the information gleaned when he helped expose an Arizona official who moonlighted as a crude Internet troll while Jill Richardson and I weigh in on Brazil's soccer madness, climate record, and economic dynamism. Do you...
Water Refugees
Like most Americans, I always took the clean water running out of my tap for granted. That changed in January, when West Virginia American Water (WVAW) sent out an all points alert to stop drinking, cooking, washing, or doing anything else with the H₂O flowing into my...
The Next Steps for the EPA’s Clean Power Plan
On the heels of the Environmental Protection Agency unveiling its proposed carbon pollution standard for existing power plants, clean-energy supporters from coast to coast are digging into the details. As we work to understand how the plan will help us tackle climate...
Highway Funding Runs out of Gas
Lawmakers writing the transportation spending bill have a problem. Actually they have 89 billion problems, because that's how many dollars they are short between what they want to spend over the next six years and the revenue bean counters expect. Considering the...
