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This Week in OtherWords: February 5, 2014
This week in OtherWords, Mitchell Zimmerman, Khalil Bendib, and I weigh in on the Affordable Care Act and Jill Richardson ponders better ways to mark Valentine's Day. On our blog, Karen Dolan sizes up the Farm Bill in verse. Do you want to make sure you don't miss the...
America the Beautiful for the 21st Century
During this year's Super Bowl, Coca-Cola debuted a 60-second commercial paying tribute to the diversity of our nation. Coke's "It's Beautiful" ad featured expansive scenes of the country and shots of a wide variety of real people. Some of them were enjoying a Coke. It...
Tipping the Scales of Inequality
At a pancake house in Houston, Claudia spent two hours rolling silverware into napkins on a slow weekend night. Without any tables to serve, she wasn't tipped to supplement her $2.13 hourly wage. Like many other restaurant employers, Claudia's boss did not make up for...
It’s Health Care, Not Software
So the Affordable Care Act didn't exactly deliver the greatest website. What did we get after all those years of haggling? Only health insurance for 9 million people (and counting) who didn't have it before. Only an end to pre-existing medical conditions keeping you...
Utah’s Progressive Innovation
Utah hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since LBJ's landslide 50 years ago, but the Beehive State now stands at the cutting edge of one progressive policy. It's on course to wipe out chronic homelessness, those without shelter for more than a year,...
Are We Doomed to Ever More Inequality?
America's ongoing debate over economic inequality may be turning a new page. Starting in the 1980s, during the debate's first chapter, pundits and policymakers battled over whether the United States was in fact becoming more unequal. This initial debate is over now....
Making Valentine’s Day More Meaningful
Valentine's Day, it seems, has all the trappings of a made-up Hallmark holiday. It's a holiday created purely to encourage us to go out and give our money to a few select industries: greeting cards, candy, roses, restaurants, etc. As it turns out, the holiday has a...
The Unaffordable WeDon’tCare Act
Remember when it looked like the Republican Party could do nothing but stamp its feet and shout about the Affordable Care Act's shortcomings without coming up with any alternatives? OK, there was former Sen. Jim DeMint's suggestion last summer that having the...
Taking Tailgate Patrol to the Next Level
In the ever-escalating competition to be the No. 1 big-time college football program in the nation, Ohio State University bulked up last fall with a monster recruit named Maxx. Actually, it's not the coaching staff that signed this brute, but the OSU campus police...
Winning Elections by Hook or by Crook
The chance to win Seems so remote, When the Man decides Who gets to vote. Political operatives are running websites with smiling photos of Democratic candidates as part of a fundraising campaign. But there's a catch: They're asking for money to defeat these...
