Archive
Ryan Runs Into the Truth
To borrow from President Lyndon Johnson’s colorful analysis of a Nixon speech, “I may not know much, but I know chicken [droppings] from chicken salad.”
Second-Hand Smoke
Cigarettes: The Killer that Won’t Die
Would you believe that 45 million adult Americans still smoke? That’s about one in five of us grownups. Worldwide this killer habit ends about six million lives each year. But what’s most disturbing — 10 percent of victims never even took a puff. They got their cancer from second-hand smoke.
More Than 46 Million Americans Still in Poverty
As state anti-poverty programs around the country confront severe budget cuts, today’s report indicates income inequality has reached an all-time high.
Record Poverty Persists While Gap Between Rich and Rest of Us Increases
Sadly, those who “occupied” Wall Street and city squares across the country in 2011, were right: All of the income gains have concentrated at the top, while the rest of us saw a deterioration or stagnation in our wages and income.
This Week in OtherWords: September 10-16, 2012
Katie, a young writer who is also a stand-up comedian, has shared an “unedited” (that is, a painfully honest and entertaining) draft of Ann Romney’s speech with our readers.
A Glimmer of Military Budget Sanity
Here’s a milestone of sorts. For the first time since 1998, the House of Representatives voted in July to maintain the current military budget rather than increase Pentagon spending. It’s the first step toward bringing the budget down.
Illegal Interns
It’s time we ditched the term “internship.” The word’s greatest value to employers resides in its vagueness.
We Won the War on Poverty, then Lost the Peace
When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty in January 1964, the poverty rate was over 19 percent. By 1972 it had fallen to less than 12 percent, and it stayed there for most of the 1970s.
Anyone who says we lost the war on poverty is flat out ignoring these numbers. We won the war on poverty. What we lost was the peace.
The Drought Lottery
Politicians on both sides of the aisle are planning to shamelessly take advantage of the devastating drought and stick taxpayers with a bloated, wasteful Farm Bill. This trillion dollar bill won’t fix the drought, but it will put taxpayers in a fix.
