Archive
The Best Way to Keep Our Water Safe
2014 has been a bad year for drinking water. First, a coal industry chemical spill left West Virginia residents in nine counties with water so polluted they could only use it to flush their toilets. And now 82,000 tons of coal ash have found their way into a river...
Boxing Us into Poor Job Prospects
You know what America needs? More jobs, that's what. Not Walmart-style "jobettes," but real jobs. We need more stable employment with a good salary and benefits, union jobs so workers have a say in what goes on, and jobs that have strong protections against...
The Ultimate Captive Market
Now here's a heads-they-win, tails-we-lose situation: Three of the contracts Arizona signed with private companies to house its prisoners require 100 percent occupancy. That's right: If the state fails to send along enough jailbirds to fill all the beds, it pays a...
Drone City
Would You Like a Shot of Formaldehyde with That?
The delightfully naughty movie star Mae West liked to joke: "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." Less delightful are some of the purity claims of such food manufacturing giants as PepsiCo, which has long marketed a line of its Frito-Lay snack foods as "Simply...
Yet Another Coal Ash Spill: This Time in North Carolina
Cross Posted from the Sierra Club's Compass blog On Sunday, a stormwater pipe burst underneath an unlined pit storing wet coal ash at a retired Duke Energy coal plant in Eden, North Carolina, spilling up to 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of wastewater...
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...
