Archive
Going Full Circle Back to the Heyday of Inequality
The future just keeps getting brighter for Americans with unique specialties. Randy Stearns has one such specialty: "home-tech integration." Stearns helps people install and maintain high-tech gadgets. But we're not talking "Geek Squad" agents and hooking up home...
Bossing the Poor Around
I spent a few months on food stamps this year. As a single woman in San Diego, I qualified for $70 a month — less than a dollar per meal. But I'm lucky and I'm unusual because many of my friends are farmers and gardeners and I know how to forage wild foods. Determined...
Abusing Animals to Defend Tar Sands Oil
Both the old and new media agree on is this: If you need a story that's guaranteed to be popular, go with animals. Cute kittens, puppies, porpoises, penguins, and polar bears are all a good bet. Now, corporate shills are tapping this animal ploy to push some of their...
Higher Education Takes the Low Road
College lifts us From the mob, But not all do A nifty job. Before World War II, college was mostly for the rich. Starting with the GI Bill, which gave thousands of WW II vets a shot at getting an advanced degree, education became a more common route for upward...
Tax Houdini
Squeezing More Profits from Crummy Tomatoes
"I'm 98 percent confident we can make a tomato that tastes substantially better," Professor Harry Klee recently exulted to The New York Times. Hmmm. Excuse me, professor, but "substantially better" than what? One of Momma Nature's own heirloom varieties perhaps? No,...
The Syrian Miracle
Considering the recent wave of poor relations between Moscow and Washington, the U.S.-Russian cooperation on Syria seems miraculous and is worthy of the support and encouragement of our people. The fact that both parties have strategic reasons to need a non-violent...
This Week in OtherWords: September 11, 2013
This week in OtherWords, Peter Certo likens the situation in Syria to a "landmine" and Jim Hightower celebrates a campaign that wants extreme weather events named after the politicians who refuse to recognize or do anything about man-made climate change. Do you want...
The Off-the-Cuff Breakthrough on Syria
John Kerry may have just accidentally earned himself a Nobel Peace Prize. In off-the-cuff remarks to reporters, the Secretary of State reiterated his support for a U.S. attack on Syria, saying Bashar al-Assad could only ward off a U.S. strike by turning over his...
A Trumped-Up War on Welfare
You're the top 1 percent. You pocket one out of every five dollars of the nation's income — more than double your slice of that pie in 1976. You want even more, but the masses are catching on. What do you do? You get your minions to attack the bottom 1 percent to...
