Archive
Rebuilding the American Dream, One Insurance Policy at a Time
The Republicans give lots of reasons for their opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Only two really matter. One is politics. The other is money. More precisely, big-business money. Like Social Security and Medicare, the expansion of health insurance coverage is...
A Silver Anniversary for the World Wide Web
Exactly 25 years ago, the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee conceptually "invented" the World Wide Web — and set in motion a process that would rapidly make the online world an essential part of our daily lives. By 1995, 14 percent of Americans were surfing...
Cry a River over California’s Drought
As a Californian, I have not gotten too much sympathy from friends and family about our rotten weather this winter. Yes, I said rotten weather. It's been incredibly pleasant— except for a few times when the temperature crept up to 90 — but we've hardly had any rain....
The Corporate Land of Oz
In L. Frank Baum's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the "wizard' turns out to be a phony — just an old guy sitting behind a curtain, using his booming voice to spew nonsense in a vain effort to fool people. But now, a century after Baum's fictional Oz, a real-life...
The Rigged Housing Market
An upscale housing development in Wilton, Connecticut (all of Wilton is upscale) is having no trouble selling its 20 units for $800,000 each. On average, homes in that town now fetch more than $1 million a piece. And real estate experts only rank the region that...
Wall Street Charges Ahead
Caught in the Act
Medical science has long known that the optic nerve runs from the retina of our eyeballs to the visual cortex of our brains, letting us see what's going on around us. Don't look now, but another "optic nerve" has evolved. Rather than running to our brains, however,...
This week in OtherWords: March 5, 2014
This week in OtherWords, Timothy Karr explains what's so bad about Comcast's plan to gobble up Time Warner Cable while Jim Hightower weighs in on Greg Abbott's choice to campaign with Ted Nugent at his side. I'm new to Twitter @ESGreco, but have realized that...
Why You Should Fear Big Bad Cable
Twenty-five years ago this month, Sir Tim Berners-Lee introduced an open protocol for sharing information that gave everyday Internet users the power over what they created and whom they connected with online. His concept quickly evolved into the World Wide Web. One...
Exporting Extremism
In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer has vetoed a bill that would have written anti-gay discrimination into state law in the name of religious freedom. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni signed an even more extremist law that sentences LGBT people to life in prison and...
