Archive
This Thriller Is Both a Joke and No Laughing Matter
In the standard spy thriller, our hero gets captured by agents of a repressive government. They take him into a dark interrogation room, where the sadistic spymaster hisses: "We have ways of making you talk." In real life, the director of our National Security Agency...
Marriage Equality Hits Critical Mass
During his recent bar mitzvah ceremony, Duncan McAlpine Sennett had to chant a biblical passage in Hebrew and deliver a short sermon in English putting that text into perspective. The Portland, Oregon 13-year-old had an unusual challenge with this routine part of the...
A Bunch of Subversives
Flashback: You Can’t Save Social Security by Destroying It
One of my favorite stories of 2004 concerned Senate Majority Leader William Frist and his campaign fund. Realizing he had an excess of funds, he invested in the stock market. He lost about $450,000 between 2000 and 2004. You would think that would have taught...
A Poor Educational System
There's a growing army of the working poor in our nation, and big contingents of these folks are now on the march. They're strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing against the immoral economics of inequality being hung around America's neck by the likes of Walmart,...
This Week in OtherWords: December 4, 2013
This week in OtherWords, Sarah Anderson relays how taxpayers are subsidizing the CEOs of huge fast food companies, Sam Pizzigati sums up the Pope's economic concerns, and Jill Richardson explains why holiday giving doesn't require consumerism. Donald Kaul is still...
Exposing Secret Trade Pacts
NAFTA. CAFTA-DR. TPP. TTIP. That numbing spoonful of alphabet soup represents four so-called free trade pacts that benefit global capital at the expense of everyone else. The North American Free Trade Agreement came first, and NAFTA will soon mark its 20th...
The Fake Debt Crisis
As the American people tried to celebrate last year's holiday season while mourning the loss of 26 lives in Newtown, Connecticut, Congress and the White House were duking it out over the "fiscal cliff." Our leaders reached a temporary solution on New Year's Day that...
Thou Shalt Not Tolerate Inequality
Sometimes you don't have to say anything "new" to make news. Consider the "apostolic exhortation" the Vatican recently released. This statement from Pope Francis, observers note, didn't really break new theological ground. But the Pope's exhortation, his first since...
Celebrating the Season without Worshipping Consumerism
The holiday traditions are starting already. Here's mine. My mom called me because she found a great deal on a paring knife at Williams Sonoma. Do I want it? I assured her that I'm getting along fine with the knives I have but thanked her for the thought. And I have...
