Archive
How the Government Can Save $2 Trillion
This summer, members of Congress are threatening to shut down the federal government or block efforts to raise the limit on how much the U.S. government can borrow unless lawmakers agree on tough action to cut federal spending. With the budget deficit expanding and total debt now estimated at more than $14 trillion, the House budget doesn’t even begin to make a dent.
Loose American Screws
My feeling continues to grow that somewhere deep in the psyche of the American people there is a screw loose.
David Koch’s Crass Act
David Koch, the right-wing multibillionaire, likes to pose as a class act. He’s thrown around several million bucks, for example, to get a wing of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center named for him and to buy a seat on the board of WGBH, Boston’s prestigious public television station.
Jim Crow Immigration Law
This Recession Isn’t Temporary
I love economists — they’re so optimistic. They’re no used car salesmen, but they’re never as gloomy as the data they traffic in. The reason for all this sunshine is plain enough — it’s what they’re paid for. With few exceptions, the only economists we hear from work for Wall Street, Congress, the White House, big media, or other groups with a public axe to grind.
The Lineup: Week of June 27-July 3, 2011
Peter Certo explains why he’s not buying a shiny new iPad and William A. Collins says that big business is trying to keep climate change out of the news.
Three Strikes against Apple
Apple, like most other electronics companies, makes liberal use of an ore called columbite-tantalite — widely known as coltan — whose electrical retention properties improve the battery lives of electronic devices. While Australia is the world’s largest coltan producer, suppliers for Apple and its competitors often prefer to buy their coltan at lower cost from mining operations in war-ravaged eastern Congo.
One Montana County’s Medicare-for-All Coverage
Back when he presided over the Senate’s health care reform debate, Max Baucus, chairman of the all-powerful Senate Finance Committee, had said everything was on the table — except for single-payer universal health care. When doctors, nurses, and others rose in his hearing to insist that single payer be included in the debate, the Montana Democrat had them arrested. As more stood up, Baucus could be heard on his open microphone saying, “We need more police.”
Tell the People about the People’s Budget
If you listen to the pundits and TV commentators, the federal budget problem has a simple solution: cuts, cuts, and more cuts. They cheer politicians for making “tough choices,” which usually entails taking money away from schools, stiffing public workers, and telling the poor and the elderly they need to make do with even less. Tough choices, indeed — but for whom?
America the Vulnerable
This March, federal prosecutors charged six members of an antigovernment group called the Alaska Peacemakers Militia with plotting to wage a campaign of murder and kidnapping against court officials and state troopers. They had already amassed an arsenal of weapons, including hand grenades, assault rifles, and a .50-caliber machine gun.
