Archive
BP’s Ethics
Want a Job? Good Luck
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,” Grandma said. We all learned that as kids, but sometimes we swallow dumb stuff anyway. Like now. We want to believe the economy is improving, so we grasp at headlines or TV news leads that offer hope. But those hopes are fools’ gold. The media mostly feature reports of growth because that’s what advertisers, especially real estate and stock brokers, want to hear. Glowing reports stimulate buyers.
Letters to the Editor: Kaul on Kagan and God
Readers tend to love or despise OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul. Here’s the latest on their letters.
Immigrants’ American Dreams
Growing up, I always thought of America as a destination. A place where most people, regardless of where they lived, wanted to be.
Tea Party Should Attack Military Spending
Bring government down to the bare bones, the tea-party people say. Mainstream reporters are dutifully noting all this, for the most part. Meanwhile, they’re failing to ask tea party activists about a more effective way to curb deficit-building federal spending that’s not on their cost-cutting wish-list: the wasteful programs embedded in world’s largest bureaucracy, the Pentagon.
School Diversity under Siege
The South has made more progress in providing children the opportunity to attend desegregated schools. Now, sadly, it’s also the region where re-segregation is growing fastest.
Spilling Subsidies to BP
BP’s catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico demonstrates how risky oil and gas drilling really is. For the 11 crew members killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion, Gulf communities, ocean water and wildlife, the impacts were immediate. The long-term repercussions will also be devastating. Stopping the leak, cleaning up the mess, and restoring the economic viability to the Gulf’s many industries that rely on clean, healthy water is going to be an enormous challenge.
Running on Hot Air
Here’s my advice to you people upset with the way things are going: Run for public office (preferably the U.S. Senate, where you only have to fool the voters once every six years). Remember, whether you’re part of the problem or part of the solution, you can extort a ton of money from corporations that want to buy your vote.
Rigging the Rules against Unions
There’s one direct, grassroots way that workaday folks can create more fairness in our country’s plutocratic, corporate-controlled economy: unite in unions. Indeed, some 60 million workers say they’d join a union today if they could.
Downplaying the Mess of War
The best part of America’s wars is that, except for limited attacks during WWII, all our conflicts have been fought on somebody else’s soil since the battle of Appomattox. This represents good and careful planning. You certainly don’t want your own constituents grousing about residual Agent Orange, depleted uranium, unexploded ordnance, blown-up bridges, or torn-down homes.
