Archive
Feeding the Economy
I never paid much attention to the food stamp debate in Congress before. But I'm on food stamps myself these days, so I'm tuning in this time around. Officially called SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps are one of those things that...
A Frog-Jumping Double Standard on Food Subsidies
I'll bet that Mark Twain, who wrote "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," would've loved a current saga. I call it "The Jumping Congress Critter of Frog Jump." The critter's name is Representative Stephen Fincher. He's a millionaire, agribusiness...
Cleaning Up Our Portfolios
Climate change may one day cause us to run low on food. Scientists don't like to talk about it, but there's a chance that the disruption we've caused by burning fossil fuels may even render life on Earth no longer viable for the human race. Sure, that sounds grim. To...
Food Stamps SOS
Screwballism vs. Science
When asked what the world needs, people tend to go all gushy and offer up such fuzzy stuff as "world peace" and "more kindness." Yeah, yeah — but get real. Let's talk practicality here. What the world needs is something tangible, a new whiz-bang product that will...
This Week in OtherWords: May 29, 2013
This week in OtherWords, Bob Lord points to the larger story behind Apple's outrageous-without-being-illegal tax record and Jess Hunter-Bowman notes that Latin America is leading the way toward a more rational drug policy. Here's a clickable summary of all our latest...
Charting a New Course on Illegal Drugs
As Manuel, a Colombian farmer, showed me his peppercorn crops ravaged by the defoliant sprayed in a futile effort to kill his neighbor's drug crops, he explained why the Drug War could never be won. No matter how much money or chemicals drug warriors threw at...
The Irish Tax Blight
Now that Apple's shady-yet-legal scheme to funnel its income to low-tax Ireland is common knowledge, a question arises. Are its tactics connected to the concentration of massive wealth at the top of society while average Americans hang on by their fingernails...
How to Help Syria Now
The appalling civil war in Syria is well into its third year. With upwards of 70,000 dead, countless numbers maimed and injured, and millions of refugees, there are recurrent calls for the United States to "do something" to end the mayhem. That "something" is usually...
Oklahoma’s Biblical Irony
There's an almost biblical irony to Oklahoma's latest tornado disaster. Not a funny irony, but the grim, tragic kind so common to acts of God. Four months before this twister, five of Oklahoma's seven members of Congress — including both of its senators — all...
