Archive
Throwing a Wrench in the Engine for Innovation
My parents are both small business owners, so I often look at current events through the lens of local economies and entrepreneurs. When a federal appeals court recently struck down the Net Neutrality rules, I was immediately concerned about the impact on businesses...
Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Finding true love, philosophers have always understood, can get complicated in deeply unequal places. Grand fortunes tend to give Cupid a hard time not just on Valentine's Day, but all the time. "If you gain fame, power, or wealth, you won't have any trouble finding...
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...
