Archive
This Week in OtherWords: Tax Day Special Edition
This week in OtherWords, we're running a Tax Day special edition. Sam Paltrow-Krulwich talks about the "gay tax" her family must pay until the nation fully embraces marriage equality, Scott Klinger highlights the declining share of tax revenue that American...
Transplanting Taxes from Corporations to the Rest of Us
Today, corporate profits are setting all-time records while middle class families continue to struggle financially. These trends are intertwined. Whether you've clicked to send your tax forms to the IRS along the cyber-highway or dropped your return in the...
The Gay Tax
As the Supreme Court considers two cases that could lead to unprecedented rulings on the right to marriage equality, I've been paying close attention. For me, the national conversation about this civil right hits especially close to home because I'm the daughter of...
Futile Military Financing
One of the more regrettable things that Uncle Sam does with your tax dollars is sending $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel every year. He'll be doing that until 2018 — and probably after, unless Americans decide enough is enough. When President Barack Obama...
New Health Care Taxes: A Poor Prescription
An aging population and the Medicare safety net make health care costs the single biggest threat to America's fiscal future. The Obama administration is leaning on the rich to help foot the bill with two new Medicare taxes, both targeting the well-off. They take...
We’re Watching a Great Depression Re-Run
The philosopher George Santayana wrote: "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." Which is what we're doing. I thought I'd found an isolated instance of that phenomenon the other day when I ran across quotes on the necessity for balancing the...
A Wall Street Powerhouse Attorney Talks Sense
With April 15 fast approaching, Americans are naturally thinking about taxes. But most of us won't be thinking about them the same way our forebears once did. Over the past half-century, our nation has witnessed a profound transformation in attitudes toward income...
A Recipe for a Sounder Diet
Healthy food is expensive and telling people to eat organic, local food is elitist. Have you heard that argument before? It's true. Healthy, organic, local food is expensive. Calorie for calorie, you get more for your money at a fast food drive-thru than at a farmer's...
Fracking Free Speech
It's one thing for Big Oil to bust into our communities, groundwater, and economic well-being with the hydraulic fracturing natural gas boom. Now, in addition to poisoning the environment, this fracking fad is busting the free speech rights of locals who dare to speak...
Under-Taxing the Rich Is Uncivilized
Please don't fret about paying taxes. They're your most productive investment. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. noted more than a century ago, "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society." Tax cuts may bring some temporary relief for the yachting...
