Rights and Democracy
Corporations Are Spending Their Tax Cut — on Themselves
Remember last year when Donald Trump and his congressional Trumpeteers bragged that their "yuge" tax cut for corporations would spark a "yuge" corporate spending spree to create new jobs and higher wages? Well, just as they promised, we’re now seeing corporate...
Below Par, Above the Law
The Tax Scam Is Starting to Sink In
It’s no fun being scammed. I distinctly remember looking for my first big city apartment and finding an ad that looked perfect. Beautiful picture, cheap rent, great location. It sounded too good to be true and, sadly, it was. Just send a check in the mail, and don’t...
‘Chain Migration’ Is a Nasty Canard
Let's do a mental exercise. Imagine that Jose moves to the United States from El Salvador. He comes here legally — he applied for the diversity visa lottery and he won! Then he quickly gathered together the required papers to prove to the U.S. that he was who he said...
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...