Archive
Perfect: The Enemy of the Happy
Unhappiness is New York City after an 18-inch snowfall.
The Glory of War
Some 32,000 Americans have been maimed in Iraq and another 8,000 so far in Afghanistan. And for what?
Unmanned Drones
America’s Expendable Workers
Back in business school, they taught us that a company’s major costs were land, labor, and capital. There were strategies to minimize each, with labor the most complicated cost to control. That hasn’t changed, even though workers have increasingly become replaceable parts, the federal government has weakened labor rights, and much U.S. manufacturing takes place in other countries.
The Lineup: Week January 3-9, 2011
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Our Slow-Motion Global Accident
The Cancun agreement could open a loophole that lets companies in the United States continue to pollute–as long as they pay someone else in another country to reduce their emissions. It’s called carbon offsetting, and it means U.S. families living in the toxic shadow of big polluters will have to suffer the health impacts of dirty energy, while companies get to claim credit for cleaning up their act.
Enough Already: Close Gitmo
In January 2009, as one of his first acts as president, Obama signed an executive order that committed the United States to closing the prison within a year and ending the practice of torture.
The Con to Criminalize Immigrants
A person might be detained in a for-profit center like Stewart for any number of reasons, many of them bureaucratic. Some detainees were seeking refuge in the United States as victims of U.S.-sponsored military training and atrocities in Latin America. Other detainees are farmers, whose only economically viable option was to find work in the United States in order to provide for their families. Trade policies beneficial to American agribusiness are often at the root of this type of migration.
Modern Mad Men, Targeting Our Kids
The television series Mad Men, set in the early 1960s, shocks young parents today with scenes of children riding in station wagons without seat belts and putting dry cleaning bags over their heads for fun. Thank goodness so much more about keeping our kids healthy is now known, we chuckle.
America the Exceptional
We are the greatest country on earth. If you don’t believe it, just ask us.
