Rights and Democracy
A Food Stamp Indignity Worthy of Dickens
Even Charles Dickens, England's masterful satirist of the Victorian upper class, couldn’t have imagined elite rulers using a box of food as a gratuitous way to slap poor people. But Donald Trump and two of his slap-happy cabinet officials did imagine it — and then did...
Racism is Literally Killing African-American Mothers
At first glance, tennis star Serena Williams and the late activist Erica Garner don't have much in common. They lived different lives on different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. But as black women in America, they both shared horrifying stories due to...
Caught Her Red-Handed
The Attorney General Thinks Aspirin Helps Severe Pain. He’s Wrong.
Recently Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave Americans suffering severe pain some advice: "People need to take some aspirin sometimes and tough it out a little." As someone who has suffered chronic pain for over 20 years, his remarks make me very angry. Sessions was...
The White House Vs. Working Stiffs
Have you noticed that Donald Trump constantly prefaces his outlandish lies with such phrases as: “To be honest with you,” “To tell the truth,” and “Believe me”? Why? Because like a snake-oil salesman, he constantly needs to convince himself that he's speaking the...
No Love for Working Families This Valentine’s Day
Love is in the air. Or so the marketers want us to believe, as Valentine’s Day ads sweep the nation into a frenzy of buying flowers, greeting cards, and confections to communicate our affection. Washington is less forthcoming with the adoration, especially for working...
Get Ready for More Voter Suppression
When President Trump created the "Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity" last spring — and put notorious vote suppressor Kris Kobach at the helm — voting rights advocates had decades of good reasons to be concerned. The panel seemed destined to back...
Bad Bureaucracies Are Fraying the Social Safety Net
I've always believed in government. That is, I believe there are roles in society that can be best performed by a government — to serve the people, rather than a profit motive. But I'm fed up. It's like a crisis of faith. I'm trying to believe the best about the...
Americans Hate the Tax Bill Because It Wasn’t Written for Them
It’s odd that Washington Republicans are so loudly crowing about their passage of the Trump-McConnell-Ryan tax law. Odd because the people outside of Washington hate that law. Yes, hate. With a public approval rating of only 30 percent, the GOP’s trillion-dollar...
What Trump Wants on Immigration Is Ethnic Cleansing
I’ll be honest: I didn’t watch Trump’s State of the Union address when it aired. Instead, I put my baby to bed and watched reality TV with my wife. If that rattled a few brain cells, hopefully I saved a few more by not guzzling the bourbon I’d set aside to steel...
