Archive
Congress: Rescue the Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act protected the nation’s waters for decades, from the Great Lakes and Mississippi River, to small headwater streams and associated wetlands. Yet Congress and the Supreme Court have allowed the act to falter for the past nine years.
Warning: Shopping May Prove Deadly to Miners
One of the many lessons we must learn from the 29 miners who lost their lives in Montcoal, West Virginia is that our patterns of energy use, as well as how we shop, are intimately tied to those who risk their lives each and every day deep beneath the Earth’s surface.
Tax Policy: Maybe It’s Time to Start Over
Some serious and high-minded rich people calling themselves “Wealth for the Common Good” think they might ought to pay higher taxes. Not only themselves of course, but all upper-income Americans as well. Got bucks? Pony up! As you might expect, this feeling is not rampant among the prosperous set, so it is good for their personal safety that the “Wealthers” cannot be readily identified by hair color, tattoos, or other insignia.
Which Mitch Do You Believe?
Mitch-the-the-prairie-populist is publicly pretending to be fighting Wall Street, while Mitch-the-bankers’-buddy is privately shaking them down for campaign cash in exchange for being on their team. Who could be cynical about that?
Cornering the Seed Market
It’s Economics 101, and the National Family Farm Coalition points out what happens with the consolidation of the seed industry.
Senate Emissions
The Other 95 Percent
The next time you read about another tea party protest convened to decry the tax bogeyman, log on to “The Other 95%” website (http://theother95.com).
Remembering Benjamin Hooks
Former NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks opened doors. “Many of the rights we take for granted today were made possible by the courage and tenacity of Ben Hooks and others of his generation who devoted their lives to the relentless pursuit of equality and justice for all,” writes National Urban League CEO and OtherWords contributor Marc Morial.
Too Fat to Fight
Pizza and freedom fries have become national security threats. As Marian Wright Edelman recently put it in an OtherWords op-ed: “It’s time to fight childhood obesity.” The U.S. military gets it. A military officers group called “Mission: Readiness” wants to make school lunches healthier, after its new study reported more than a quarter of Americans ages 17-24 are ineligible to enlist because they weigh too much. The group appeared on Capitol Hill to tell Congress about this problem.
Exploiting Athletes
The NCAA is mulling the expansion of the men’s college basketball tournament, an inevitability that will mean young athletes will rake in millions more dollars for their schools. Marc Morial’s recent OtherWords op-ed, College Basketball Graduation Rate Insanity and cartoonist Khalil Bendib’s accompanying cartoon highlight this exploitation, which will only deepen as the money increases. And this change would be a great opportunity to follow up on Morial’s suggestion “that schools failing to graduate at least 80 percent of their athletes not only be ineligible for post-season play, but lose all of their athletic scholarships.”
