Archive
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...
The Russian-American Beat Must Go On
The Edward Snowden drama has skipped from Washington through Hawaii and Hong Kong and into Moscow. Now, the storyline is back to Washington. Thanks to Russia's decision to grant Snowden asylum for a year, Obama canceled a bilateral meeting with President Vladimir...
Confessions of a Repentant War of 1812 Reenactor
It began innocently enough. I volunteered on a museum's boat-building project — a replica of a longboat of the type used by Commodore Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. Before I knew what was happening, there I was in period military attire,...
The Legacy of 9/11
The 9/11 attacks comprise one of those events that you remember where you heard of it and how, like the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was for old-timers and JFK's assassination was for middle-timers. I had recently retired (for the first time) and was sitting at an...
Danger Ahead: Our Disappearing Pensions
How's your 401(k) doing? Working Americans ask themselves this question — and angst about the answer — a great deal these days. And why not? For most Americans, retirement reality has turned chillingly stark: Either you have a robust set of investments in your 401(k)...
The USDA’s Reckless Plan
My friend Jim, a farmer, jokes about bringing a bowl of manure and a spoon to the farmers' markets where he sells his beef. "My beef has no manure in it, but you can add some," he'd like to tell his customers. I'm sure you'd pass on manure as a condiment. But unless...
Naming the Names behind Extreme Weather
Environmental groups tend to be a bit grim-faced. That's understandable since they're constantly confronting industrial uglies that range somewhere between awful and apocalyptic. So it's a treat when one of them turns impishly playful, as a group of climate change...
Haiti’s Hard Place
Americans are optimistic sorts. That makes it hard to fathom Haiti's grim circumstances, even though the country is just 700 miles from Miami. Business there is controlled by a handful of elite repressive families, the infrastructure doesn't support serious...
Weather Extremists
Idaho’s Reclusive Promised Land
I haven't heard such enthusiastic, downright raucous applause since Texas Gov. "Oops" Perry suggested in 2009 that his state just might withdraw from the union. Unfortunately for him, the applauders weren't Texans. They were the people of the other 49 states. This...
