Not too many years ago, any news story about bonus money would’ve been about some 20-year-old baseball player – an up-and-coming superstar getting $100,000 or so on top of his salary as an extra incentive to join the Yankees, Giants, Red Sox or whatever team. Sportswriters dubbed them: “Bonus Babies.” How quaint. These days, stories […]
Common Sense
Posted inOpinion
Let’s re-fund America
The powerhouses of Wall Street have tunneled directly into the cloistered backrooms of Washington deal making, extracting trillions of dollars worth of government bailouts, special tax breaks and regulatory favors every year. Yet, in a stupefying act of hypocrisy, they have also been the major force pushing policymakers to embrace extreme laissez-faire bunkum and to […]
Posted inOpinion
The symbolism of one adjunct professor’s death
If one obscure college professor dies, does it make any difference? If you’re Margaret Mary Vojtko, yes. Margaret Mary died last summer at age 83 – and her death has turned her name into an emotional rallying cry for adjunct college teachers who’re seeking justice from their schools. Vojtko had taught French classes for 25 […]
Posted inOpinion
Finding populism today
Mass movements don’t just appear out of the fog, fully grown, structured and mobilized. They emerge in fits and starts over many years, just as the American Revolution did, and as did the Populists’ original idea of a “cooperative commonwealth.” In 2011, a serendipitous moment for the populist cause rumbled across our land. That September, […]
Posted inOpinion
Employment Policies Institute flimflam
In L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the wizard turns out to be a big phony – just an eccentric old guy sitting behind a curtain, using his booming voice to spew nonsense in a vain effort to fool people. But now, a century after Baum’s fictional Oz, a real-life incarnation of […]
Posted inOpinion
A tax on high frequency traders
Have you heard about High Frequency Trading? HFT is sweeping, purely speculative financial transactions that have been made possible by huge leaps in technology. Done by super-fast computers, using mathematical algorithms, HFT searches millions of prices at lightning speeds and places bets automatically. Transaction times are measured in milliseconds, as the global network of “trading […]
Posted inOpinion
Don’t close our post offices
You know what America needs? More jobs, that’s what. Not Wal-Mart-style jobettes, but real jobs – stable ones with good salary and benefits, union jobs so workers have a say in what goes on, jobs that have strong protections against discrimination. A job one can make a career, do useful work in, take pride in, […]
Posted inOpinion
The mobsters of Wall Street
Assume that you ran a business that was found guilty of bribery, forgery, perjury, defrauding homeowners, fleecing investors, swindling consumers, cheating credit card holders, violating U.S. trade laws and bilking American soldiers. Can you even imagine the kind of punishment you’d get? How about zero? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. No jail time. Not even a fine. […]
Posted inOpinion
The educated poor: adjunct professors
There’s a growing army of the working poor in our U.S. of A., and big contingents of it are now on the march. They’re strategizing, organizing and mobilizing against the immoral economics of inequality being hung around America’s neck by the likes of Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and colleges. Wait a minute. Colleges? That can’t be. After […]
Posted inOpinion
The millionaires’ Congress vs. the people
The rich truly are different from you and me – they tend to hold seats in Congress. Our nation purports to be a representative democracy, yet you don’t find many plumbers, mineworkers, dirt farmers, Wal-Mart associates, roofers, beauty parlor operators, taxi drivers, or other “get-the-job-done” Americans among the 535 members of the U.S. House and […]
Posted inOpinion
What if antibiotics no longer work?
Have you had your daily minimum requirement of triclosan today? How about your dosage of triclocarban? Chances are you have, but don’t know it. These two are antimicrobial chemicals, which might sound like a good thing – except that they disrupt the human body’s normal regulatory processes. Animal studies show, for example, that these triclos […]
Posted inOpinion
MRAP, Maxx and militarization of local police
What a Christmas little Bastrop had! It’s still a mystery how Santa Claus got it down the chimney, but Bastrop got a nifty present that most children could only dream about: A big honkin’, steel-clad, war toy called MRAP. But Bastrop is not a 6-year-old child, and an MRAP is not a toy. Bastrop is […]
