Archive
Robbing Grandma to Reward Wall Street
When I grew up in Texas, the dance we all learned was the Texas two-step. But times have changed. The next big dance these days could be called the Social Security double shuffle. A good number of senators are waltzing to the music of the “let’s cut Social Security” crowd by trying to sell a solution to the deficit designed to hack apart the government-guaranteed retirement plan we’ve had since the 1930s.
A Global Game that Never Ends
Yemen? Yes, boys and girls, it’s time to look at our world atlas again, to see where America’s tax dollars and troops are headed next.
Harebrained
Change Can Be Tougher Than Hope
On the campaign trail, On the campaign trail, Barack Obama electrified Americans with his bold call to transform despair into hope, and voters elected him in a landslide. Democratic candidates for Congress rode his broad coattails to large majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that his party hadn’t held in a generation. The stage was set to transform hope into change, for jobs, health care, climate change, and many other fundamental challenges.
Reporters Should Tell Us the Truth about Global Warming
There’s international scientific agreement that emissions generated by humans are, in fact, warming the planet. So just as a journalist has no need to quote a “scientist” claiming the Earth is flat, journalists have no professional obligation to present the views of scientists who deny that global warming gases, produced by humans, are warming the planet—unless the skeptics have new and credible evidence to back them up.
Haiti: Earthquakes and Neo-Colonialism
Our hearts go out to the Haitians. Earthquakes and hurricanes. Disaster after disaster. There’s no letup. We’ll send cash, food, meds, trucks, pumps, clothes, shovels, tarps, bulldozers, cement, computers, docs, water, clergy, plumbing, prayers, and everything else we can think of.
Shouldn’t ‘Local’ Businesses Be Local?
Giant corporations are trying to co-opt the meaning of one of our important words: “local.” It’s important because small businesses across the country have created a very positive, grassroots economic movement, based on being local producers, providers, and marketers. Over 130 cities have “local business alliances,” with 30,000 businesses enlisted.
Arming Yemen against al-Qaeda
Americans got a crash course on Yemen for Christmas. That’s because we’ve wanted to know more about the little-known, dirt-poor country in southwestern Arabia where the “underwear bomber” who tried to blow up a plane—bound for Detroit from Nigeria on Christmas Day—says he was trained.
Race and the Rapture
Race is a subject about which nothing honest or candid can be spoken (particularly by a white person) without risking being branded a racist.
Planet Titanic
