All I Want for Mother’s Day is Equality for My Child

| May 3, 2019 | HP Featured|Rights / DemocracyWhat mother on earth doesn’t want equality and health for her child? I certainly do. I gave birth nearly two decades ago to a healthy, beautiful, intelligent child, who cried more than I thought she would and whose tutu-wearing terrible twos persisted into her...

Farm Country: Don’t Get Fooled Again

| May 1, 2019 | Economy / Business|Editors Picks|Environment / Health|HP Featured|Rights / DemocracyI’m a retired public school teacher living in Des Moines. I grew up here close to the city limits, with an easy escape to the countryside that was once dotted with miles and miles of small family farms. The sight and even the smells of those small farms were a welcome...

A Revolutionary Idea to Close the Racial Wealth Divide

| Apr 17, 2019 | Economy / Business|Editors Picks|HP Featured|Rights / DemocracyThe gap between America’s ultra-wealthy and the rest of us is growing dramatically as wealth continues to concentrate at the top at the expense of the rest of us. One major symptom of this economic rift is the racial wealth divide, which is greater today than it was...

For Military Contractors, Tax Day Is Pay Day

| Apr 8, 2019 | Economy / Business|HP Featured|Peace / SecurityIn tax season, most of us think more about getting our forms in on time — and getting our refunds — than about where our tax dollars actually go. It’s probably no surprise that a significant portion — 24 cents out of every dollar — of your taxes go to the...

The Death Penalty Is Getting Crueler

| Apr 3, 2019 | HP Featured|Peace / Security|Rights / DemocracyFor years, most of the U.S. has been changing death penalty laws in the direction of phasing it out, or at least applying it in a more humane way. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that people with intellectual disabilities cannot be executed. In 2005, another ruling...

Rural America Needs Medicare for All, and Fast

| Mar 25, 2019 | Economy / Business|Environment / Health|HP Featured|HP Subfeatured|Rights / DemocracyWe’ve got a rural health care emergency on the horizon. Rural hospitals are closing or teetering on the brink of closure at an alarming rate. More than a hundred have closed since 2005 and hundreds more are on life support. Long-term care facilities are vanishing...