Archive
House Rebuffs Veto Threat on Fighter Jet Engine Program
Pollan Digests the Latest Food Politics Books
Benefits for the Long-Term Unemployed to be Debated Again
Democrats are working to pass legislation that will extend unemployment benefits, but it faces GOP opposition.
Pundits Cheered Drilling Shortly Before BP Oil Disaster
Oops. Why did the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which triggered an environmental catastrophe seem so out of the blue? Well, for starters, if you were relying on the major media for any information about offshore oil drilling’s safety, you would have known not to fret
Fighting War Funding
Activists are urging Congress to stop wasting so much money on what increasingly look like futile wars.
Adding Toxic Chemicals to a Toxic Oil Spill
With BP’s disastrous oil slick filling the Gulf and sliming our shores, the corporation has already bought a third of the world’s supply of dispersants and is spraying them onto the slick. The chemical mixture supposedly breaks the floating oil into tiny droplets that then sink to the sea floor. The good news is that this treatment can minimize the volume of oil that would hit the Gulf coast.
Safe Food, from Soil to Plate
Americans need to adopt a broader approach to evaluating the quality of their food, from soil to plate. We must consider the integrity of the overall production process in addition to evaluating the immediate safety of the food that reaches the consumer. While outbreaks and hospitalizations grab headlines, there are unseen other costs to our current production system.
Resurrect the Estate Tax
America’s first-ever billionaire, John D. Rockefeller, died in 1937. His heirs faced a 70 percent estate tax on the bulk of his estate. Tycoon Dan Duncan’s heirs are enjoying a zero percent estate tax. When he died, his son and three daughters became instant billionaires.
A Main Street and MLK Boulevard Stimulus
“What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford a hamburger?” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked in 1968. Today, many of us who fought for lunch-counter rights have children and grandchildren who can’t afford a restaurant meal.
Academic Diversity on the Supreme Court
Do you realize that if she is confirmed, everybody on the Supreme Court will be a product of either Harvard or Yale? All nine of them.
