Blog - OtherWords

Budgeting for Ignorance

Will Rogers said that when Congress is in session, the public gets the same panicky feeling as “when the baby gets hold of a hammer.”

Energy production is too vital to be left to private industry’s tender mercies. Therefore, sensible nations run that sector of the economy themselves. Unfortunately, there aren’t many sensible nations, and those that are often get invaded.

Supreme Corp.

by Khalil Bendib

The Lineup: Week of July 18-24, 2011

by Emily Schwartz Greco

Peter Weiss explains why “June 30, 2011 will go down as a dark day in the annals of the struggle against torture.”

Connecting Extreme Weather Dots Across the Map

by Janet Redman

I took a cross-country road trip in late June that became a race to outrun the triple-digit heat waves that have literally buckled highways between the Midwest and the East Coast.

Marching to Save Our Schools

by Mary Tedrow

I will return to Washington, DC on July 30 to participate in the Save Our Schools march and rally because I don’t want to lose something that defined my childhood: a great public school education.

Casino Crops

by George Naylor

Thanks to decades of deregulated agriculture, markets for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and other farm commodities have become high-stakes casinos. If family farmers are to be stewards of the land and safe, nutritious local supplies of food are what we want, then we must implement tried and true policies of supply management and conservation.

Justice Department Gives Torturers a Pass

by Peter Weiss

The Romans had an expression for it: “Nulla poena sine lege,” no punishment without a law. But people sometimes forget that the opposite is also true: Without punishment for offenders, a law itself can die.

Sleazy Corporate Holiday

by Donald Kaul

My father, long dead, spent his working years in tool and die shops in Detroit, an experience from which he crafted a political, economic, and social philosophy of life. “They’re all in it together,” he would say. That was the very core of the philosophy.