Economy and Business
Another Counterproductive Assault on Food Stamps
Once again, Republicans are taking aim at poor people. What is it this time? Adding a stricter work requirement to receive what used to be known as food stamps. (Today it's known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but that just doesn't have the same...
It’s Time to Cut the Contractors Loose
How much of your paycheck do you plan to hand over to corporate Pentagon contractors this year? The average American taxpayer will have paid $14,520 in federal income taxes in 2017. And that’s not even including the taxes that every working person pays to take care of...
‘Modernization’ Is Media Code for Military Build-Up
One of the most effective rhetorical tools in normalizing massive military budgets is to treat spending billions — and sometimes trillions — of dollars as something one has to do in order to be "modern." "Modernization" is, after all, an attractive label. Who doesn’t...
Betsy DeVos Needs an Education on Ethics
Question: What do you get when you combine ignorance, imperiousness, and incompetence? Answer: Betsy DeVos. She's Donald Trump's multi-billionaire education secretary, who hates public education and loves the plutocratic idea of corporate rule over democracy. DeVos is...
Draining the Swampsky
King’s Dream Included Economic Equality, Too
April 4 marks the 50th anniversary of the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. American history...
If You Want to Kill Drug Dealers, Start with Big Pharma
At a recent rally in New Hampshire, Donald Trump called for the death penalty for drug traffickers as part of a plan to combat the opioid epidemic in the United States. At a Pennsylvania rally a few weeks earlier, he called for the same. Now his administration is...
A Shiny New Tool to Pad Profits: Stealing
Workplace exploitation is at least as old as the industrial revolution. But rather than using whips to make the assembly lines move ever faster, today’s corporate exploiters use technology, devious work schedules, and lobbyists to extract more work from employees —...
A Sick New Game from the Executive Suite
Today’s corporate captains like to think of themselves not as mere businesspeople, but as geniuses of modern innovation. But innovation for what purpose? After all, some of society’s most inventive minds are flimflammers, Ponzi-schemers, gamers, and embezzlers —...
Billionaires Won’t Save the World — Just Look at Elon Musk
Will Mars save humanity? Or will our savior be billionaire Elon Musk? Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, humbly believes we don’t have to choose. Mars will save us, he promises, and Musk himself will engineer this Mars miracle. In 2019, Musk claims, SpaceX will start...
