Archive
This Week in OtherWords: June 12, 2013
This week in OtherWords, Timothy Karr discusses the surveillance scandal (Spygate?). We're also running immigration op-eds by the Sierra Club's Michael Brune and a mom who wants the ongoing reform efforts to include stronger protections for au pairs. Are you looking...
Dancing Around the First and Fourth Amendments
Whether you think spying is OK or not depends on your relationship to the information being collected. If you're on the gathering end, the invasion of someone else's privacy doesn't seem like a big deal. But if you're the one whose private life is being pried into,...
A More Sustainable Future for Us All
Like many great Americans, Sierra Club founder John Muir was an immigrant. It's only because the Scottish-born environmentalist visionary, who arrived in the United States at the age of 11 after a six-week sea voyage from Glasgow, was able to take advantage of the...
A Radioactive Waste of Money
Can a single example illustrate why the federal budget is so hard to get under control? A somewhat obscure nuclear processing plant on the Savannah River in South Carolina might do the trick. The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, known by the awkward acronym MOX,...
Stripping Detroit of Its Remaining Riches
My old hometown — or, as I like to call it: “The Late Great City of Detroit” — is threatening to add an oak leaf cluster to the badge of humiliation it wears like an Olympic medal. It's bad enough that the city's previous mayor is awaiting sentencing on corruption...
The Day the Music Stopped
What do bank executives who make $19 million a year do in their spare time? The same thing they do in their executive suites. They squeeze America's middle class. That's not, of course, what the flacks at U.S. Bancorp, the nation's fifth-largest bank, will tell you....
Casting a Spotlight on Frankenfoods
Do you have a right to know how your food is produced? Look at any label on something made for human consumption. Whether it's a bite-sized candy bar, a box of cereal, or a gallon of pickles, you'll see lots of information: a list of ingredients, allergen warnings,...
Catching Monsanto’s Drift
Bob Dylan once sent a two-word lyric to Ben Harper, a talented songwriter he admired. "Well well," was the lyric, and Dylan challenged Harper to make a song of it. He did! By adding another "well" to the title, Harper wrote "Well, well, well" — a stinging lament about...
Egging On North Korea
As our dust-up with North Korea stumbles inexorably onward, the U.S. media is tearing its hair out over how any sovereign nation could possibly act so irrationally. Well, how about looking in the mirror? North Korea's policies and supreme leader may seem kooky, but...
It’s Time Corporations Flew Old Glory Instead of the Jolly Roger
The swashbuckling pirates of olde amassed private fortunes by raiding ships and stealing them. Once they captured a ship, they would replace its flag — which represented one of the world's sovereign nations — with the Jolly Roger. By flying the skull and crossbones,...
