Archive
The Internet Racket
Is your Internet bill too high? You can thank the phone and cable companies for that. Today, high-speed broadband services offered by these national carriers cost more than $500 a year and even more when customers are forced to bundle Internet access with cable or...
The Path We Should Follow after Syria Crosses the Red Line
President Barack Obama's recent announcement that he believes Syria has used a small amount of chemical weapons ignited a debate. Has the Assad regime crossed the "red line" the White House laid down? U.S. intelligence reports "varying degrees of confidence" that...
Banking on the Poor
What's a fair interest rate to pay on a loan? If you think a 300 percent annual percentage rate (APR) is no big deal, you can stop reading. But if you'd be outraged to learn that some of the country's biggest banks — like Wells Fargo, Regions , US Bank, and Fifth...
Obama and the Red Line
Flying Over an Act of Monumental Stupidity
I knew that Congress would come to its senses eventually, that it would realize that the ham-handed budget cuts ordered by the so-called "sequester" weren't going to work, that some government functions were too important to be cut. And I was right, kind of. Last week...
Austerity Will Leave Us Crying ’96 Tears’
Aging baby boomers may remember a 1960s rock band that sported an all-time great name. That band — Question Mark and the Mysterians — may now have a worthy rival on the name front. Make way for Reinhart-Rogoff and the Austerians. Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and...
A Parenting Priority
Any kid can easily rattle off a list of their parents' biggest sins. When I was younger, my gripes included my mom and dad stealing my Halloween candy and not letting me watch R-rated movies. Later on, I was ticked that my parents made me go to school on Senior Ditch...
Narco-State Building
After 11 years of war, $664 billion spent, 2,210 Americans dead, more than 35,000 of our troops maimed and shattered, and our good reputation spent — what have we built in Afghanistan? According to a top international law enforcement official, you and I are building...
The War on Sex
Abortion, condoms, Things that vex, Those who would Prohibit sex. Fewer American teens are getting pregnant and the national abortion rate is falling. Time to break out the champagne and the bananas flambé, right? But many religious zealots aren't celebrating these...
Whitewashing 8 Awful Years
Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that we saw George W. Bush on TV reading The Pet Goat to some second graders. Now he's all grown up and has an entire , super-duper, king-sized library filled with big books and other neat stuff — all dedicated to him. Bush's...
