Archive
America’s Housing Paradox
As the Bible pointedly reminds us, rains fall alike upon the just and the unjust. Nowhere is this axiom more pointed than in securing a place to live. Sure, maybe some of those luckless homeowners who fell victim to the Great Mortgage Scam were indeed trying to pull a fast one on their creditors–but most folks were simply plodding nobly through the American Dream. It didn’t matter. Honest or shady, Wall Street took them all down.
The Lineup: Week of April 25-May 1, 2011
This week’s OtherWords editorial package features a column by William A. Collins that puts the Libya intervention in context and a cartoon about a retirement home for dictators.
Same Old from the Nuclear Gang after Fukushima
The nuclear industry has promised the world cheap, safe, and clean energy for 60 years. As the Japanese government continues to extend its nuclear evacuation zone around the Daiichi nuclear complex in Fukushima, the pushers of nuclear power–including President Barack Obama–still demand that Congress approve ever-larger subsidies for new reactors.
America Needs a Single Payer Health Care System
The new norm is underinsurance. About 40 percent of us go without needed care because we can’t afford it. The health care law won’t change that, even once it’s completely phased in. Our plague of medical bankruptcies will continue too.
Want to Cut Federal Spending? Go Where the Money Is.
If we are serious about cutting or redirecting our federal spending to important priorities like health care and education, we need to go where the money is, too. Roughly 59 percent of discretionary federal spending is military spending. That’s where we need to look.
Squandering Our Tax Dollars and Ocean Resources
As concerns about the nation’s widening deficit grow louder, many of the Obama administration’s 2012 budget priorities are getting short shrift. It’s not only important to understand the government’s approach to hot-button issues like Medicare, military spending, and tax cuts for the wealthy. We need to pay attention to other critical issues.
Why are we the Tea Party’s Hostages?
At issue was the federal budget, which needed to clear Congress to keep the government going. The protestors think the government is spending way too much and the national debt is too big. They want to cut both of them to the bone. And they intend to use the Republican Party as their knife.
From Democracy to Plutocracy
In American politics, the past not only sticks with us, but it often provides the best definition of what’s going on in the politics of the present, so it can be useful to revisit some powerful words from our history.
Retired Dictators
Libya: It’s All about the Oil
If the U.S.-NATO war on Libya sounds pretty fishy to you, go to the head of the class. You’re way ahead of Congress and the most influential media outlets. Lawmakers and pundits know full well why Washington is intervening in Libya. But they don’t want to risk their mainstream credentials by revealing it.
