Economy and Business
How Can We Serve Our Public Servants?
Back in my 20s, I had a modest dream: By my 40s, I hoped, I'd be able to pay off my student debt. I’d even give some of my hard-earned money to my mom and rent a nice apartment. Maybe I'd get a dog, too. And I wanted to do it while making a difference for...
The Great Fountain-Pen Robbery
Even the word "greed" isn’t negative enough to characterize the all-out assault on workers by today's corporate elite. From offshoring jobs to busting unions, and from slashing wages to looting pensions, avaricious executives and wealthy investors are taking...
The Divestment Dividend
As Earth Day approached, fossil-fuel divestment actions rattled college campuses large and small. Targets ranged from Harvard University’s $36-billion endowment to the University of Mary Washington’s $46-million nest egg. That’s only natural: Students, professors, and...
Odd Bedfellows, Lying Together
Come one, come all. Step right up and buy your ticket for a ride on the splendiferous, phantasmagoric, and miraculous Trans-Pacific Partnership! The TPP isn’t some sort of futuristic flying machine. It’s just another global trade scam coming at us like a volcanic...
Fast Tracking the TPP
Making Science History
We've all seen those touchy-feely TV ads with baby deer, butterflies, and sylvan streams — claiming that some big corporate polluter is nature's best friend. There's a word for such hokum: greenwashing. Leave it to the Koch brothers, however, to invent a whole new...
America’s Billionaires Owe You a Thank You Note
This tax season, America’s billionaires are toasting you, the ordinary taxpayer. That’s because you’re the one picking up the tab for our nation’s ailing infrastructure of roads, bridges, and rail transport. You’re also footing the bill for military forces, disaster...
Saving Coal Country
Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell recently took the extraordinary step of calling on governors to ignore Washington’s Clean Power Plan, an EPA mandate to curb carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. "Declining to go along with the administration’s legally...
A Higher Education Revolution
You might not have noticed it yet, but student protests are undergoing something of a renaissance. They're rising to levels unseen in decades. In California, students are stripping half naked to oppose tuition hikes and shutting down highways to draw attention to...
Debt Collectors or Pick Pockets?
Whenever a corporation issues a statement declaring that it's committed to "treating consumers fairly and with respect," chances are it's not. Otherwise, there would be no need for a statement. This particular claim came from Encore Capital, one of our country's...
